As some of you know I'm spending the next two months holed up at the cottage on the Kingston Peninsula of New Brunswick getting some writing and research done. The topics are varied and will include my promised discourse analysis of the parliamentary hearing regarding Bill C-36. The printed testimony put me over the luggage limit on the way out, so it will be done because it ain't coming back.
Today is provincial election day with every indication that the results will be a shift from Progressive Conservative to Liberal government. Even with the rise in polls of the PC in the last week of the campaign it looks to be too little too late to stop the pattern of alternating government that has held since the end of McKenna. The third party traction again looks to be lacking. This showed in the last week's poll when it looked that NDP numbers declined in favour for the P.Cs. To all intents and purposes it smacks of a frustration and legitimation crisis regarding government, but a further distrust to go outside the box to try alternatives to the two main contenders. That is something I intend to explore more deeply while I'm here, but not for this blog.
As this blog is focused on women's and feminist politics, my interest today is to review and count the number of women involved in the election. Women's issues came up twice last week on CBC radio in the Maritimes. The first was a complaint from the female liberal candidate in Riverview that she had received threatening notes and an on street approach commenting on her femaleness and that she had no place in the electoral contest. She "should be raising children rather than playing with the big boys." The second issue, was the response of the Liberal Party leader to the distribution of graphically offensive flyers by the Canadian Institute for Bio-ethics, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The flyers were apparently a response to the Liberal leader's statement that he and his party would be willing to review and seriously look at abortion access in the province. And today while I was picking up pens in the Dollarrama the radio news on some country station had a segment discussing the women candidates and women's representation in the province. Having just come from the provincial election in Ontario it is interesting to see these issues aired on the media. They certainly were not as present in the Ontario campaigns.
The races in N.B. have been interesting particularly because redistributing resulted in six fewer ridings up for contest in this race. The result is a weird shift regarding incumbency where, on the one hand, a number of ridings have no incumbents, and on the other hand, there are several ridings with two incumbents running. Tomorrow when I have a clear idea of who is successful in each riding I will be able to see if this had an effect on the success of women candidates.
However, in the meantime, below is the number and percentages of women running for each party.
Liberal: 14 women out of 49 candidates = 29%
P.C.: 13 women out of 49 candidates = 27%
(New*) NDP: 15 women out of 49 candidates = 31%
Green Party: 22 women out of 47 candidates = 47%
People's Alliance: 5 women out of 17 candidates = 29%
Independents: 2 women out of 8 candidates = 22%
Remember the United Nations puts the target for women's representation at 30% of elected representatives. Given these numbers of candidates it is very unlikely the legislature tomorrow will meet that 30% threshold.
* It has always been a bit of an irrational bug-bear of mine how the NDP ends up redundant not only electorally but also grammatically. The tendency for people to refer to the NDP as the "NDP Party" has always been a minor irritant. It's redundant to say the New Democratic Party Party. Well the New Brunswick NDP has gone one further on this as now for the campaign it has become the New New Democratic Party Party.
Today is provincial election day with every indication that the results will be a shift from Progressive Conservative to Liberal government. Even with the rise in polls of the PC in the last week of the campaign it looks to be too little too late to stop the pattern of alternating government that has held since the end of McKenna. The third party traction again looks to be lacking. This showed in the last week's poll when it looked that NDP numbers declined in favour for the P.Cs. To all intents and purposes it smacks of a frustration and legitimation crisis regarding government, but a further distrust to go outside the box to try alternatives to the two main contenders. That is something I intend to explore more deeply while I'm here, but not for this blog.
As this blog is focused on women's and feminist politics, my interest today is to review and count the number of women involved in the election. Women's issues came up twice last week on CBC radio in the Maritimes. The first was a complaint from the female liberal candidate in Riverview that she had received threatening notes and an on street approach commenting on her femaleness and that she had no place in the electoral contest. She "should be raising children rather than playing with the big boys." The second issue, was the response of the Liberal Party leader to the distribution of graphically offensive flyers by the Canadian Institute for Bio-ethics, an anti-abortion advocacy group. The flyers were apparently a response to the Liberal leader's statement that he and his party would be willing to review and seriously look at abortion access in the province. And today while I was picking up pens in the Dollarrama the radio news on some country station had a segment discussing the women candidates and women's representation in the province. Having just come from the provincial election in Ontario it is interesting to see these issues aired on the media. They certainly were not as present in the Ontario campaigns.
The races in N.B. have been interesting particularly because redistributing resulted in six fewer ridings up for contest in this race. The result is a weird shift regarding incumbency where, on the one hand, a number of ridings have no incumbents, and on the other hand, there are several ridings with two incumbents running. Tomorrow when I have a clear idea of who is successful in each riding I will be able to see if this had an effect on the success of women candidates.
However, in the meantime, below is the number and percentages of women running for each party.
Liberal: 14 women out of 49 candidates = 29%
P.C.: 13 women out of 49 candidates = 27%
(New*) NDP: 15 women out of 49 candidates = 31%
Green Party: 22 women out of 47 candidates = 47%
People's Alliance: 5 women out of 17 candidates = 29%
Independents: 2 women out of 8 candidates = 22%
Remember the United Nations puts the target for women's representation at 30% of elected representatives. Given these numbers of candidates it is very unlikely the legislature tomorrow will meet that 30% threshold.
* It has always been a bit of an irrational bug-bear of mine how the NDP ends up redundant not only electorally but also grammatically. The tendency for people to refer to the NDP as the "NDP Party" has always been a minor irritant. It's redundant to say the New Democratic Party Party. Well the New Brunswick NDP has gone one further on this as now for the campaign it has become the New New Democratic Party Party.
Interesting analysis Jacquie
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