Skip to main content

"25%" Documentary on getting young women engaged in politics

Here is a trailer for a documentary project I have been involved with over the past year: 25%. This is a joint project between the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, London City Council, and web.isod.es (a web-based documentary maker based in London), that has been spearheaded by Joni Baechler, our wonderfully activist city Councillor and current interim Mayor. This is part of the Head Start Progam undertaken by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. So far I've taken part in a consciousness raising meeting at King's University College, UWO, officiated by Joni and the three female student council presidents from (King's, Huron and Brescia) and an UnConference with female senior highschool students from London. Earlier this summer I was interviewed by the documentary crew for the final documentary. I hope some of it makes it into the final project. The whole process has been particularly gratifying in meeting enthusiastic young women who are keen to find ways to be active and have their voices heard.

Please check out the trailer at: http://25percent.ca/

About 25%: A Documentary

The United Nations has set a minimum standard for representation by women. in democratic governments at 30%. This was further expressed in the 2011 General Assembly resolution on Women’s Political Participation, which states “that the active participation of women, on equal terms with men, at all levels of decision-making is essential to the achievement of equality, sustainable development, peace and democracy.”
Despite this reasonable target, active participation by women as representatives in municipal, provincial, and national governments in Canada is only 25%.
The City of London is proud to be one of the six communities in Canada selected to participate in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) Head Start for Young Women program. As a part of this program, we are producing a documentary called “25%” which encourages young women’s participation in politics and civil society.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Low Voter Turnout Actually A Good Thing?

 [It's a provocative position. I hope my answer is a bit more nuanced. Thinking with a pen, so the views are my own and likely to change as I think about it a bit more.] The big talking point regarding yesterday's municipal election in London is the free fall debacle in voter turnout. Only 25.5% of eligible voters cast a ballot, a significant plunge from the 40% turnout in 2018 (the BRT election) and from the 2014 high of 43% (the get rid of Fontana and the Fontana 8 election).  This low turnout is seen as the reason for the rather surprising outcomes in some of the words, namely the defeat of three "incumbents."* Incumbents are considered safe bets because they have name recognition and represent the status quo for voters. Generally, the mass of voters in municipal election have little to guide their votes other than name recognition and a desire not to change things up. However, when that "mass" of voters decides not to show up, that generalized support fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

This time: Employment Statistics Part Time Full Time Work

The end of term is always a difficult time to get any writing done, which is a problem because I'm on a deadline. However, I did manage to hive off a little time from marking and dealing with student queries to compile the following statistics on Part Time and Full Time work and how it is distributed by gender. This is drawn from Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey characteristics and the U.S Bureau of Labor, Labour Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey. It's for a piece I'm working on about the gendered nature of work in Canada and the U.S. Table 1. Canada Female and Male Employment F ull Time and Part Time Percentage of working population by gender Years Employment total (thousands) Part Time Full Time Female Male Female Male Female Male 2007 7477.7 8185.6 25.4 10.1 74.6 90.0 2008 7541.1 8254.8 25.6 10.4 74.4 90.0...
2 comments
Read more

Women Running in Ontario 2018

I started this blog back in 2014 after the Ontario election by discussing the number of women who ran and their success. This time I'm ahead o the ball, so today I'm giving you the lowdown on how many women are running, for which parties and where. Earlier this week, in honour of Mothers' Day, Andrea Horwath announced that more than 50% of the NDPs candidates were women (69 of 124 or 55.6%) ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ndp-liberals-pcs-women-election-voters-1.4661203 ). She praised the NDP for insuring that gender equity principles are part of the nomination process. To their credit the other mainstream parties have all increased the number of women running, this is even with the addition of 17 new ridings in this election. The percentage of women running for the Liberals has increased by 10% and the Progressive Conservatives have increased their number by 8%. The Greens come closest to the NDP running women in 64 of 125 ridings, according to a count of their w...
2 comments
Read more