The presence of women on the political scene in Quebec has been growing steadily since 2005. The day after the last provincial election on October 3, 2022, 46.4% of elected officials were women, according to an update from the Institut de la Quebec statistics.
This is an increase of 16 percentage points since 2005.
“Since the last election, we have had the highest proportion of women elected to the National Assembly,” explained the expert advisor and coordinator of the social indicators program for the Institut de la statistique du Québec, Marie- Andree Gravel.
In concrete terms, 58 women had a seat in the National Assembly after the last ballot.
According to the professor of political science at Laval University Marc André Bodet, this observation can be explained by several reasons. Attitudes have evolved, so that society is more accepting of the idea that women can hold positions of power.
“Women imagining themselves in a position of power, maybe that’s more common today because of socialization than it was in the past,” he explains.
Marc André Bodet believes that we will continue to see more and more women in political spheres and that there is little chance of seeing a significant decline.
“It creates models, but also female political figures who are then in a position to play a role in democratic life,” adds the professor.
So the trend is that the more women there are elected, the more women there will be who will stand as candidates to become MPs.
Also, according to the professor, the fact that Quebec has been governed by three different parties (PQ, PLQ, CAQ) over the past ten years has resulted in a faster renewal of elected officials, and therefore more opportunities for women to leap into politics.
“It accelerated the departure of male incumbents and, at the same time, enabled women to win nominations and then become MPs,” he said.
Quebec is the Canadian province with the highest percentage of female representation in its legislative assembly. The average for the other Canadian provinces is 32.7%.
“Women will be ready to sacrifice themselves”
In the last Quebec election, 43% of candidates were women. This is a record for a general election, according to data available on the Elections Quebec website.
The four parties currently represented in the National Assembly – CAQ, PLQ, QS, PQ – all had a number of women candidates who were in the parity zone (between 40% and 60%) at the time of the vote.
Thus, with 46.4%, there are more women elected to the National Assembly, in proportion, than there were candidates. A figure that may surprise, because according to Mr. Bodet, women candidates tend to be given losing constituencies.
“Traditionally, when there’s a constituency that a party has little or no chance of winning, most of the men pass, while the women are going to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the team,” he said. .
He says that the CAQ, in particular, has made efforts to recruit female candidates, but also place them in winnable ridings.
The municipal is lagging behind
There is also an increase in women at the municipal level. Since 2005, the percentage of female mayors elected in Quebec has jumped by nearly 11%.
However, the municipalities are still far from the parity zone. In 2022, only 24% of mayors were women. “There is still a noticeable improvement […] but it remains the level where the representation of women is the lowest,” says Marie-Andrée Gravel, of the Institut de la statistique du Québec.
For Marc André Bodet, it is a question of resources and the fact that there are no well-organized political parties in the vast majority of municipalities in Quebec.
“Even today, most women who want to get involved in politics come from less advantageous professional sectors from an economic point of view. […] In the municipal world, there is little money available through party structures, because usually parties are vehicles driven by a candidate for mayor,” he explains.
“At the provincial and federal levels, political parties can often offset candidacies with a smaller network, with funding from elsewhere,” adds the political scientist.
However, we currently see women at the head of major cities in Quebec: Valérie Plante in Montreal, Catherine Fournier in Longueuil, Évelyne Beaudin in Sherbrooke and France Bélisle in Gatineau.
However, Mr. Bodet asserts that one must be careful before drawing conclusions from this observation. “You can’t establish a trend yet,” he says.