“When I decided to run, nobody coddled me, and that’s what all of us are saying, nobody gave us any special treatment,” said Candice Bergen (Portage-Lisgar, Man.).
She appeared with caucus colleagues Joan Crockatt (Calgary Centre, Alta.) and Michelle Rempel (Calgary Centre North, Alta.) to speak about women in politics at the Manning Networking Conference today, also International Women’s Day.
“We undertook the same process as the men of our party did. We went through the backrooms, we ran campaigns, dropped leaflets, we ran riding associations, we networked. We built that network so that when that riding nomination opened up, we dropped the grenade, we dropped the plan to win that seat,” said Ms. Rempel.
“Then when you come to your place of legislature, you know how to do business,” she explained.
Ms. Rempel said she can’t support plans for quotas for female candidates for that reason.
“There’s a principle in there that says somehow we can’t play with the men, and I completely disagree with that,” she added.
There are currently 75 women sitting in the House of Commons, representing 25 per cent of the seats in the House. Of those, 28 are Conservative, seven are Liberal, 38 are New Democrats, one is Green and one is Bloc Québécois. In the 2011, 452 women were candidates, a high in recent years.
In the Senate, women hold 30 per cent of the 108 seats.
Canada is ranked 45 out of 189 Parliamentary democracies in the number of women in federal parliament, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
“We should get voted in on our ideas and not our genders, and I certainly don’t need Marc Garneau or any other Liberal telling me what I need to do to get into politics,” said conservative Newmarket, Ont., city councillor Maddie Di Muccio, who was also on the panel.
Liberal leadership candidate Mr. Garneau (Westmount-Ville Marie, Que.) announced last week that he would set a target of at least 40 per cent women candidates for the party in the next election.
When Ms. Di Muccio ran for office in 2010, she said she was encouraged to differentiate herself from other candidates by her gender. She decided against the strategy.
“Absolutely we need women, I couldn’t agree more, because we certainly bring a lot to this job, but I didn’t want to put out there the whole sense that you should vote for me because I am female, you should vote for me because I’m wearing a skirt. I could be a female but I could be a horrible politician. I wanted to run based on ideas, I wanted to run based on philosophy, I wanted to run based on being a capable individual,” Ms. Di Muccio said.
Prior to her election, she worked for Conservative MP Lois Brown (Newmarket-Aurora, Ont.). Ms. Di Muccio is also a regular columnist for the Toronto Sun.
Each woman said that candidates should be successful because of their merit rather than as a way to get more women into politics.
“I always bristle when I hear, ‘We need more women in politics,’ I just do,” said Ms. Bergen.
“I believe that we need more integrous, [sic] strong, capable, people and many of those are women,” she stated.
Ms. Rempel said the idea of “merit over tokenism” is gaining traction.
“It should be celebrated as the next generation of gender equality,” she said.
The question Ms. Crockatt said she is often asked, is whether women should run for office because they have different perspectives than men, or because they are essentially the same as men, and equally as capable.
“The answer to those things is both. Women can do both of those two things,” she said.
“I’m not denying that we do not have challenges, we of course still do. To succeed in politics you really have to have a very clear purpose, a strong will, a thick skin and a willingness to take measured risks. This is really no different from the skills that men need in politics,” she said.
Ms. Rempel, who is Parliamentary secretary to Minister of Environment Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) said that sexism is alive and well in the political arena.
You’re worthy because of who you are, and what you bring to this job individually,’” agreed Ms. Di Muccio.
Ms. Bergen also said she believes that the Status of Women Department is no longer needed.
“We can never forget what the women’s movement did, but I think young women today aren’t thinking that they are downtrodden. I don’t think women today are thinking that they are at a disadvantage,” she said.
Fifty years after the first publication of Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique, Ms. Rempel said that there is still a need for government to be mindful of women’s issues.
“A lot of those people would say, those principles don’t apply any more, we don’t have housewives at home that are imprisoned, or however that book presents things, but I do think that there is a role to be ever-vigilant,” she said.
“It’s not, do we need a department or not, but are we serving women in our current policy framework, and I would say the answer is yes,” she added.
She also singled out the “pink sandbox” that outlines stereotypical women’s issues.
“I can’t accept that because all issues are women’s issues, all issues are issues for both genders,” she said.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: JESSICA BRUNO
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