We can’t afford to lose women in public life
Last week, community members gathered at Kindred Coffee in Lindsay to lament and address the increasing threats, trolling, and violence faced by women in politics. There was standing room only. Women and men. Everyone. The event was an inspiring evening of togetherness, inspiration, and hope.
What is stopping many women from running for public office isn’t capability. It’s the calculation about what public life costs these days, costs that I don’t need to pay nearly as much as a man.
This calculation is a problem. Unfortunately, we’re not an outlier. We’re part of the pattern. We are losing women in politics before the race even begins. Currently, only two of our nine members of council are women.
In Ontario’s last municipal elections, only 31 per cent of all candidates were women. But when women run, they win. And at a higher rate than men: 47 per cent to 43 per cent in Ontario’s last municipal cycle. The barrier isn’t electability. It’s candidacy.
And this is ours to fix.
Misogyny – yes, misogyny, not just sexism – in local politics isn’t usually something obvious enough to condemn in a statement. It shows up as a woman councillor being interrupted mid-sentence, or talked over, and everyone pretending it’s just lively debate.
It comes in the form of women candidates’ passion being called “bitchy” or “hysterical.” It also arrives as a female candidate’s position being called emotional while the identical argument from a man is “principled” or the challenging – or berating – of a woman leader when the male who’s present leaves the room. And it takes the forms of the harassment that lands in email inboxes, and voicemails, and comment sections dressed in persistence and aggressiveness. It is reserved for women who hold opinions in public. This isn’t an occupational hazard – “part of the job” – it’s a structural failure. It’s an extension of the sexist attitudes still entrenched in our society: women as less competent, weaker, appearance-based, threatening.
In our municipality with eight wards and a council table that needs to reflect the full range of who we are, we cannot afford to keep losing people before the race even begins. When women participate fully in economic and civic life, the evidence is clear: economies grow, poverty shrinks, and decisions better reflect the communities they’re meant to serve. No community can afford to leave half its talent on the sidelines.
I want to be specific about what we men can do, partly because I think we spend too much time waiting for women to carry this fight themselves, and partly because I haven’t always gotten it right myself. Here are some thing that have helped, in my experience: ask women leaders what they need and want before deciding to “go to bat” for them (I did before writing this article); notice and speak up when it happens — in the room – before the meeting moves on; when a woman is being talked over, say so; when a female candidate is piled on online, respond publicly; push for gender-diverse panels and speakers; and don’t just ask women if they’ve considered running. Meet with them. Tell them why you think they should. Offer support.
Culture doesn’t change from the top down. It changes at the margins, one correction at a time — at the coffee shop, in the lunchroom, on social media. The harassment Tracy Richardson faces, and Councillor Pat Warren receives, didn’t start online. It began more ordinary than that.
With the municipal election now less than four months away, the recruitment window is open.
This doesn’t take a big plan. It just requires deciding that democratic participation is worth protecting, and that protecting it is the job of all of us.
We in Kawartha Lakes have many challenges to work on — cost-of-living, roads, housing, healthcare, keeping our environment beautiful. We’re going to need every capable person we can get at the table.
Half our talent can’t afford to opt out because we didn’t create an equal and respectful room together.
— Councillor Mike Perry represents Ward 3 on Kawartha Lakes City Council.
Councillor Perry deserves credit for raising an issue that warrants serious discussion. Women in public life face unique barriers, including gender-based harassment, stereotyping, and abuse that have no place in a healthy democracy. His statistics clearly demonstrate that women remain underrepresented as candidates despite being just as electable when they do run. That’s a problem our community should take seriously.
At the same time, I believe his column also points to a broader challenge. The climate that discourages many women from seeking office is increasingly discouraging people of all backgrounds from serving. While the forms of abuse women experience are often different and more personal, the growing hostility toward anyone willing to hold public office is shrinking the pool of candidates overall.
The evidence may already be in front of us. With the municipal election only months away, Kawartha Lakes Ward 7 (Lindsay South) still has no registered candidate. That should concern everyone. Our challenge is no longer simply one of representation—it is one of recruitment.
Part of the problem may also lie in the structure of municipal government itself. Kawartha Lakes is unlike most municipalities. More than two decades after amalgamation, many residents still identify more strongly with their former communities than with the City of Kawartha Lakes itself. Ongoing debates over taxation, service levels, and fairness between urban and rural areas have never truly disappeared. Annual property tax increases in the six to seven per cent range, combined with a perception among many residents that municipal services are still falling short, have created frustration that too often lands at the council table.
At the same time, we’re asking municipal councils to solve society’s biggest problems while giving them one of the narrowest revenue bases and some of the most constrained legal authority in the country. Ontario municipalities rely primarily on property taxes and user fees, yet residents increasingly expect local councils to address housing affordability, homelessness, healthcare access, infrastructure renewal, economic development, and the rising cost of living—many of which are largely provincial or federal responsibilities. Do remember, Municipalities operate at the pleasure of the Province, under strict rules and limited funding.
When those problems remain unsolved, frustration is often directed at the level of government with the fewest tools to address them. Add the scrutiny of social media, personal attacks, and an increasingly uncivil public discourse, and it’s not difficult to understand why many capable people—women and men alike—decide public service simply isn’t worth the personal cost.
None of this diminishes the additional barriers women face. If anything, it reinforces Councillor Perry’s call for a more respectful political culture. But if we focus only on encouraging more women to run without also addressing the increasingly hostile environment and the structural realities of municipal governance, we risk treating the symptom rather than the disease.
Before we ask why fewer people want to serve, perhaps we should ask whether we’ve built a municipal system that is genuinely set up to succeed. If we expect councils to solve increasingly complex problems while limiting both their tools and their flexibility, we shouldn’t be surprised when fewer capable people decide the job is worth taking on.
My grandfather served for many years on Manvers Township Council, later representing the township on Victoria County Council and serving as Warden. The challenges of local government were real then, but the role was fundamentally different. Municipal councils dealt primarily with local services, supported by a province that assumed responsibility for many broader issues. The downloading of responsibilities (Highways, ambulance service, social housing, Ontario works, child care, court security ) that followed, combined with growing provincial regulation and reporting requirements, has transformed the job. There was no email, and no social media in that era – but the phone calls to their house about municipal business were seldom thank you calls.
A councillor elected in the 1980s would scarcely recognize the modern role. Today’s municipal leaders face far more legislation, compliance obligations, reporting requirements, public expectations, legal risk, and provincial policy direction than their predecessors. Yet they are still expected to fund most of it with essentially the same financial tool their predecessors relied on: the property tax bill.
Councillor Perry is right to ask why fewer women are willing to run for office. But perhaps we should also ask why the role itself has become so much harder to do well. If we want to attract more capable people—women and men alike—we should ensure that municipal government is not only respectful, but also equipped to succeed.
Thank you, both Mike Perry and Randy Neals, for this articulate discussion. Women don’t deserve to be society’s scapegoats for system failures. And as often happens when it comes to scapegoats, there is a group attitude of looking away, perhaps with a guilty conscience. Thank you, Mike, for the litany of better responses, and also for pointing out that when women are elected, “decisions better reflect the communities they are meant to serve.” I would add that our educational system can and should play a critical role in changing the level of participation in and respect for political service at all levels. I’ve only attended one family graduation ceremony in the Kawartha Lakes — perhaps not representative of all — but neither “public service,” nor contributing to “civil society,” were mentioned in speeches on that occasion of sending young people out into the world. Let’s do better.
Thank you, Randy – for your excellent and thoughtful contribution to this important issue…
Thank you Councillor Perry for suggestions that women can also use in support of their sisters in action.
I second that. Knowing how to detect, and then respond with courage to, inappropriate civil behaviour, is a civic skill we can all sharpen.