Antiquated attitudes disrupt democracy in RM

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/12/2019 (2446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IN 2013, Rob Ford was stripped of his power as mayor of Toronto. In what was a precedent-setting vote, city council reduced his role to that of a ceremonial figurehead, following months of scandals and turmoil which included a video that appeared to show Ford smoking crack cocaine.

That was a pretty drastic step taken by the country’s largest city, ostensibly because councillors were fed up with the misconduct of their mayor and their inability to get work done in the midst of the chaos. In other words, an extreme measure in response to extreme behaviour.

In stark contrast, earlier this week, councillors in the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews voted to remove Mayor Joy Sul as chairwoman of council and stripped of her ability to act as a spokeswoman for the community. Sul was elected in 2018, defeating incumbent George Pyke with a healthy 61 per cent of the vote, becoming the community’s first female mayor in 20 years.

But now, five councillors want her silenced, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear. Deputy mayor John Pruen says the RM is stuck in a rut and it’s Sul’s fault. He claims the council can’t move ahead on the issue of wastewater, so he and four other male councillors — a “gang of five” — put forward a motion to bounce the elected mayor and take over. The other councillor, Kristin Hoebee, voted in support of the mayor at the emergency meeting on Monday.

It’s not about gender, Pruen says. Well, of course that’s what he would say. In these situations, it never is. I mean, who wants to admit, in front of reporters and bystanders, that they’re sexist?

But the language Pruen uses to support his move raises some familiar and threadbare red flags.

“After numerous attempts to try and make her a better leader and a better person, it wasn’t working out for us, and we weren’t moving ahead as we thought we should,” Pruen told the CBC.

Exactly how did Pruen expect Sul to be a leader? He didn’t really say. But according to University of Toronto researcher Sylvia Bashevkin, when it comes to leadership, women are the targets of mixed messages. Female leaders who project confidence and move assertively are viewed as hypermasculine and poorly socialized. On the other hand, when female leaders attempt to seek consensus, they are written off as indecisive, weak and even worse, “nice,” because to be “nice” means to lack charisma.

In other words, as Bashevkin points out, women can’t win when it comes to trying to lead. Act too strong, and they set off alarm bells that make men uncomfortable. Act too kind, and they risk being written off entirely.

There are allegations that when either woman on the St. Andrews council tried to put forward recommendations on policy at RM meetings, the so-called gang of five moved to stop them from going ahead. Perhaps this is what Pruen was referencing when he said the RM was stuck in a rut.

It’s also alleged that one councillor wanted to know why the women didn’t take homemade cookies to meetings. Might that be what the male councillors meant by trying to make Sul “a better person”?

Sul can rest assured she’s not alone. Last summer, three of Teulon’s four councillors voted to strip mayor Debbie Kozyra of such powers as signing authority, chairing meetings, membership on committees and acting as the town’s spokeswoman. Despite that, Kozyra continued as mayor until the three councillors quit en masse in October, sparking a byelection.

As the calendar inches toward 2020, women still do not hold a critical mass in leadership roles in municipal politics in Manitoba. The critical-mass theory asserts that representation of more than 30 per cent in an occupation allows women to have an influence on policy. After the most recent municipal elections, women occupy only 211 elected positions in Manitoba municipalities, or 21 per cent of total seats, compared to 798 positions held by men (79 per cent of seats).

Representation matters. But what’s equally important here is that in the RM of St. Andrews, 61 per cent of the electorate voted to put Sul into the mayor’s chair and a gang of five, including the deputy mayor, made the decision to override voters’ wishes.

Perhaps Pruen could benefit from some lessons regarding how to be a better person and a better leader. And as participants in our democracy, perhaps we should all use our time over the Christmas break to call him and the other members of the gang of five to let them know what we think about their anti-democratic actions — even if we don’t live in St. Andrews.

While we’re at it, maybe send them a recipe or two for homemade cookies, so they can bake their own damn goodies for meetings.

Shannon Sampert is a retired political scientist and runs the communications consulting company Media Diva.

s.sampert@uwinnipeg.ca