I'm opening this blog by dealing with big-P Politics, that is the politics of government, the state, and elections. I want to break down the results of the Ontario provincial election held on the 12th of June to see how women fared. It was a good election for women, not least because women now make up 55% of the NDP caucus. That's 11 out of 21 elected MPPs.
Here's how this breaks down. I am using the "unofficial" results from the Elections Ontario website which I printed and counted by hand. Please forgive any miscounts on my part, and to quote Elections Ontario, "These results are being provided for purposes of convenience. They are unofficial and the official results will be published by the Chief Electoral Office at a later date."
The best place to start is with how many women the main parties ran.
The Ontario Liberal Party ran 37 women, which is down from the 42 which ran in 2010. This is roughly 34.5% of the total Ontario Liberal Party candidates. Of these 20 women elected (just a little under half), which means that 54% of the Liberal women candidates were successful.This pretty much matches the general part success rate 58 seats out of 107, or 54%. The result is that, women make up 34% of the Ontario government caucus. It will be interesting to see how that translates into women in the provincial cabinet.
The Progressive Conservatives Party of Ontario ran 27 female candidates of which 7 were elected. This is a quarter (25%) of the total number of Ontario PC candidates. Of the women PC candidates 26% (25.9%) were successful (overall party success of 28 out of 107 was 26%). The number of women running was up from 2010 when 24 women ran.
The New Democratic Party ran 44 women candidates, up from 38 in 2010. This was 41% of all NDP candidates. Of the women candidates 11 were successful or a quarter of all the women running for the NDP won. This is better than the overall party success rate where 19% of all NDP candidates winning. The result is that 11 of the 21 NDP seats at Queen's Park are filled by women.
The Green Party of Ontario must also be credited with running a sizable slate of women. 37 women ran as Greens, which was 35% of all the Green Party candidates. While no Green Party members, male or female, were elected, the party did run in all 107 ridings.
This brings the total to 145 which was the number of women candidates according to Equal Voice. However, this does not include the number of women who ran for much smaller parties such as the Freedom Party, the Libertarians, the Communist, the Socialist Party of Ontario, the Family Coalition Party, the Vegan Environmental Party, The None of the Above Party, E.P.P., and one candidate for the Party for People with Special Needs. At least 16 women ran for these parties and in at least one riding were the only women on the ballot. I will blog about this in the future.
It is interesting to note the number of ridings that had no women on the ballot: 17 or 15%. This is not too shabby. The ridings were: Ajax Pickering (Lib), Chatham Kent Essex (PC), Etobicoke North (Lib), Kitchener Conestoga (PC), Lambton Kent Middlesex (PC), Lanark Frontenac Lennox Addington (PC), Niagara Falls (NDP), Ottawa West Nepean (Lib), Oxford (PC), Parry Sound Muskoka (PC), Renfrew Nipissing Pembroke (PC), Scarborough Rouge River (Lib), Timiskaming Cochrane (NDP), Vaughan (Lib), Wellington Halton Hills (PC), Windsor Tecumseh (NDP), and York Centre (Lib).
There were 34 ridings were only one woman was on the ballot (31%). Of these women won 9, place 2nd in 10, 3rd in 7, 4th in 6, 5th in 1, and 6th in 1.
There were 18 ridings in which more than 3 women were on the ballot (17% of the total ridings), these 8 had women running for the three main parties. 15 of the 18 ridings were won by women and of these 11 were won by incumbents.
The incumbency feature is interesting because generally incumbents are likely to be reelected. There was not much deviation from this principle in the election as 87 ridings of the 107 were won by incumbents. Only in 10 ridings were incumbents defeated (I am including the overturning of the first vote count in Thornhill). Interestingly, of those 10 races 7 were won by women and in 5 the sitting incumbent was male. This is probably explained by the collapse of PC support and the decline in NDP support in Toronto as of the five, four were PC male incumbent and the firth was the male incumbent in the Davenport (Toronto) riding.
Looking at these numbers the results are not bad, not bad at all. Queen's Park now has 35% of its seats filled by women which exceeds the United Nations' 30% goal for women's representation. Whether this means we have reached a critical mass where women's representation starts to meet party with that of men is still up in the air, but for now this looks reasonably good. The future will show if this translates into women's representation in the new cabinet to be installed July 2nd, what positions women are given in the cabinet, and more significantly if this means the rise of a more women friendly policy agenda (whatever that might be).
I should also say I was pleasantly surprised to find that the election coverage and the campaigns did not make a big deal out of Kathleen Wynne's sexual orientation or the fact that two of the leaders of the major parties were women. I may have missed some of the more retrograde press and will leave an analysis of the gender frames to some of my colleagues.
Stay posted.
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