Agnes Macphail - First Canadian woman elected to the House of Commons. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

In a recent CBC online article Audrey McLaughlin, former leader of the NDP, mused that Canadians may not be ready to be led by a woman. The article itself received little attention from readers, drawing only 24 comments and no play in the print or television media. The article and the muted response to it raise a number of interesting questions. Do people see another article about women and inequality and just tune out? Do they feel that the playing field has been leveled and there are no longer barriers to women’s equal participation in Canadian society? Is it true that Canadians are not prepared to be led by a woman?

Although women make up more than 50% of Canada’s population, they hold only 22% of the seats in the House of Commons. According to the United Nations the benchmark number for a “critical mass” of elected females is 30%. It has been less than a century since Canadian women were given the right to vote and run for elected office. In the first election for which they were eligible to run, held in 1921, four women ran as candidates and one, Agnes Macphail, was elected. Figure 1 below shows our progress from 1921 to 2008. Between 1921 and 1979, the number of women elected held steady at fewer than ten per election. The mid to late seventies marked the beginning of a significant growth trend: the number of women elected climbed to 62 by 1997. The less encouraging part of the graph is between 1997 and 2008, which shows a definite flattening of the strong growth experienced in preceding decades.
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