Our society is obsessed by numbers. Statistics hold us spellbound. Everything is reduced to percentages, sometimes to the exclusion of more meaningful measures. But figures can mislead, especially in politics.
For instance, statistics regarding the composition of assemblies by gender in themselves tell us little about democracy or the empowerment of women.
In our own 2011 federal election, 25 per cent of the seats were won by women. That number has, in fact, been increasing, and that’s good.
But in Ecuador the National Assembly, after their 2009 election, included 40 women out of 124 members, 32 per cent, thanks to gender quotas.
In the recent balloting in Tunisia, won by an Islamic party, women took 29 per cent of the seats, again, because of a quota system.
And in Rwanda, the election of 2008 saw 45 of 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies occupied by women, a full 56 per cent – because 24 women, two from each province and from the city of Kigali, were elected on women-only ballots.
Yet who would honestly say that women are better off in those less fortunate and less democratic countries than here?
Former Communist states also made sure that women were well represented in their parliaments. Why not? It’s not as if the women could wrest power from the Communist apparatchiks – almost all men – who actually ran the state.
In fact, many of the women legislators in today’s sham democracies are mere pawns, their names placed on proportional representation lists to do the bidding of the male “bosses” who run the political parties and to make the countries these men govern “look good” to the outside world.
These women haven’t really been elected as individuals in their own right. And the parliaments in which they sit, in any case, exercise little power.
It’s more façade than reality, often propagandistic and superficial window dressing.
We may have fewer women in our Canadian legislatures, but we know that they have actually been selected to run for office in a party’s open nomination meeting and have then won a competitive race within their riding.
They can exercise the same degree of power, and represent their constituents just as competently, as any of their male colleagues.
And as time moves on and prejudices lessen, women will indeed reach gender parity – for real.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political studies at UPEI.
