More women, fewer mediocre men

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This article was published 05/07/2018 (2673 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Someone should tell the federal Conservatives’ status-of-women critic the only reason she got the post is because she’s a woman.

Let that sink in for a bit.

Rachael Harder, the MP for Lethbridge, recently told the Globe and Mail she doesn’t believe in quotas and thinks that men and women should get their jobs based on merit, not gender. She totally misses the point that she only became the critic for status of women because, well, she’s a woman.

For context, some Conservatives complained vociferously back in January of 2017 when Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid was appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of families, children and social development.

The male Liberal MP was chosen deliberately by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to underscore that both men and women are responsible for advancing equality. A former Conservative staffer suggested it was ludicrous to put a man into a woman’s job.

Harder’s interview once again brings up the tired rhubarb that governments that aim for gender equality are doing a disservice to women, because “by putting a quota in place, we allow for men to write them off because they just attribute their seat to gender.”

But new research published in the American Economic Review has suggested that gender quotas actually have positive effects. The research suggests that quotas “actually increase the competence of the political class by reducing the share of mediocre men.”

That’s pretty remarkable.

In other words, when parties make a point of recruiting more women to run and selecting more women for positions of power, they lower the opportunity for lacklustre men to succeed in politics.

As well, researchers Timothy Besley, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and Johanna Rickne suggest that “mediocre party leaders do not pick competent candidates due to a concern for their own survival. When the share of women is increased by a mandatory quota, more women oppose male leaders due to differing policy preferences.” The outcome? The mediocre party leader steps down to ensure the party’s success.

Trudeau’s decision in 2015 to make sure his cabinet “looks like Canada” with equal numbers of men and women was both lauded and criticized. Now that it’s 2018, have provincial legislatures stolen a page from the Liberal PM in ensuring the same type of representation?

Well, yes and no.

In 2017, British Columbia’s NDP Premier John Horgan swore in a cabinet that was gender balanced, with 11 women and 11 men on the executive council. But in Ontario, recently elected Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford was heavily criticized when he unveiled his new cabinet, which has only seven women out of 21 cabinet seats.

In Manitoba, the Pallister government’s win in 2016 saw four women named to the inner circle of 13 members (including the premier). Brian Pallister said at the time, “As the father of two daughters, I believe they should have equal opportunity in life, but they should also understand that merit is what matters most.”

Three years after Trudeau’s “because it’s 2015” cabinet was named, suggesting “merit is what matters most” is still quite problematic, because cabinet promotions have always been about much more than merit.

They’ve been about political payback or keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. They’ve been about regional representation and, in some provinces and at the federal level, they’ve been about ensuring certain language minorities have a seat at the table, too. They’ve also been about signalling to your electoral base that you take them seriously and you want their voices to be heard within the inner circle when decisions are being made.

No one understands this better than former prime minister Stephen Harper, who appointed Conservative party operative Michel Fortier to cabinet in 2006, even though Fortier had never been elected but instead was offered a “temporary” Senate seat after his cabinet appointment. The reason? Harper didn’t have anyone from Montreal in his cabinet and Fortier, a Montreal financier and lawyer, was expected to fit the bill.

So, obviously, cabinet wasn’t about merit under the Conservatives — and still isn’t under the Liberals. It is about representation — however packaged.

But with this new research, perhaps party leaders can now hail gender quotas as a way of ensuring only the very best candidates run. Get rid of the mediocre men who think they deserve to win because, well, they are men, and let them face some competition from women who can push the envelope on policy discussions and create a bit of competition for leaders at the same time.

In the meantime, I am watching the women who were appointed to cabinet by Trudeau — you know, the ones who only got there because of their gender — kick some serious butt. Women such as Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s first Indigenous justice minister; Chrystia Freeland, the trade minister who is taking on U.S. President Donald Trump in a full-blown trade war; and Jane Philpott, the minister of Indigenous services who just announced four more long-term water advisories have been lifted on First Nations reserves.

I dare any man to try and write them off because they are women.

Shannon Sampert is the director of the Media Centre for Public Policy and Knowledge Mobilization at the University of Winnipeg.

s.sampert@uwinnipeg.ca Twitter: @paulysigh