August 15, 2000
Very little women - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- Women, especially with the Women’s Lib movement spearheaded by the sexual revolution and Gloria Steinem, have fought against inequality between men and women in all fields. The reality of equality hasn’t really changed, but the perceptions and the belief system has - albeit sort of.
The crux of today’s rant is women in politics. It’s a phenomenon really, because men seem to over shadow their female counterparts in the public service. (By that I mean elected office.) The reason I bring this up probably has it’s early manifestations in Joseph Lieberman’s selection to be Al Gore’s running mate in the November Presidential elections. Lieberman is a Jew and while American’s were examining, rather trying to understand their choice of the Senator, who’s probably closer to being compatible to George W. Bush than to Al Gore.
Larry King, the guru of watchable interviewing, had all the female Senators of the United States on his program recently. Seems like a lot, don’t it? But in frank actuality, the US’ upper house has only 9, of the 100 Senators, of the female persuasion. You’d have thunk that America had elected more dames.
In their lower house, the House of Representatives, of the 435 members, only 58 are women. That translates to roughly 13%. In our fair Canada, however we see that 60 women hold seats in the House of Commons (20%) and 33 women are Senators (32%.) We’ve also had two women serve as Head of State (Jeanne Sauve and current GG Adrienne Clarkson,) and we had a woman named Kim Campbell as our own Prime Minister, albeit she only governed for 4 months.
Ms. Campbell was from BC and we also led the nation when in 1991, a lowly housewife became the first woman in all of Confederation to be Premier - Rita Johnston. Both women, frankly epitomise BC’s failure to have an endowed attention span, as both women, besides serving for less than a year, witnessed the implosion of their parties as they led them into general elections.
Now it wasn’t the respective faults of Mrs. Johnston and Ms. Campbell, that Social Credit and the Tories fell so badly, but the fact their predecessors had done most of the damage. They were the best candidates amongst their caucuses (although Jean Charest, in hindsight, could have revived the Tories fortune against Mr. Chrétien in 1993,) irrespective of their gender. (Further to that, in the Socred caucus of 1991, when Bill Vander Zalm stepped aside, the only other contender for the job of leader other than Mrs. Johnston was Grace McCarthy.)
I can’t really say we’re a more modern society than our American friends. The reality of their process and system is a hell of a lot more cut-throat than ours. Soft and hard money are prevalent, as is an overly zealous amount of negative campaigning that goes on on all levels of governance. For example, our Senate is simply a non entity - a pasture for old MP’s or party hacks to collect money and perks, which on top of that is not elected. On paper, as well as in practice the American model of government is far more democratic as the executive and legislative are separate and have equal responsibilities. In Canada, it only matters on who your MP is if he or she belongs to the governing caucus.
Elizabeth Dole was my pick for George W. Bush’s running mate. (Second only to Colin Powell.) I think she’d have made a good choice and I guess hindsight will reward me with a judgement of that when the votes are counted on November 7th. Currently, there are no real women up for the job of President, let alone Vice-president. Pat Buchanan’s running mate, Ezola Foster (a woman, and black on top of that), is really a non-starter as is the Reform party which is in shambles. Not one woman was on the short lists of Bush and Gore last month, and again it’s the fault of the system, rather than sexism. There weren’t enough women Senators, Governors or Representative’s to choose from.
I don’t think people in both our countries will not elect a woman, simply because she’s a woman. I think we’ve matured, but the fact is we are a little more critical of women and we loath to admit that yet. In Canada, for example there are women who could pass as Prime Minister: Elsie Wayne, Deb Grey, Alexa McDonough, Libby Davies, Sheila Copps... but all have either their respective politics or the inability of their parties to garner viable portions of the electorate.
In the United States, I believe it is the party systems which will have to change. As a result of the American model of governance - which is far more superior than the Westminster model - is the political polarisation that results. The Republicans and the Democrats will play this see-saw routine for years to come, no matter the silly fringe parties like Reform, Natural Law and Green that crop up. The hierarchy’s of the Republican and Democratic parties will have to provoke more women to seek higher office. Perhaps in 2004 Senator Hillary may seek the Democratic ticket? God help us.
I guess not only will time tell, but be our only hope.
Questions and comments may be sent to: editor@thecommentary.ca
An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .