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BC Election 2024
Gender + Sexuality

BC’s Legislature Hits Gender Parity

For the first time in the province, women will hold the majority of seats.

Andrew MacLeod 24 Oct 2024The Tyee

Andrew MacLeod is The Tyee’s legislative bureau chief in Victoria and the author of All Together Healthy (Douglas & McIntyre, 2018). Find him on X or reach him at .

For the first time in British Columbia’s history, there will be more women sitting in the legislature than there are men.

“When I was doing the counts in terms of men and women I was surprised, and it was a pleasant surprise,” said Kimberly Speers, an assistant professor in public administration at the University of Victoria.

After the initial count of votes in the B.C. election, people who present as women had won 48 of the province’s 93 constituencies.

There may be changes to the election results in the coming weeks as Elections BC completes the final counts and any necessary recounts, but no more than a few results are likely to change and the overall pattern is clear.

“With the numbers we do know, it looks like women have surpassed the 50 per cent seat number,” Speers said. “That’s something to really be celebrated for all of us in Canada.”

It’s a significant gain since the last B.C. election when women made up 42 per cent of elected candidates, and it makes B.C. the first province to reach gender parity in its legislature, with Quebec following closely behind. In comparison, just over 30 per cent of the members of the federal Parliament are women, according to Statistics Canada. Following a byelection in 2021, the Northwest Territories was the first territory in Canada to elect majority women MLAs.

To do the count, The Tyee and Speers looked at elected candidates’ profiles and made educated guesses about their gender. Speers said the best approach would be to ask people directly how they identify, work she hopes to do in the future. “In terms of gathering this data now it’s just a lot more complicated and it should be a lot more complicated because the way we identify ourselves is not so cut and dried.”

Aspects of people’s identities such as sexual orientation, ability and gender fluidity may not be visible, she said. Nor is it always clear whether someone is likely to identify as racialized or transgender.

“It is important to focus on studying gender, but equally important for a representative democracy is the need to focus on the diversity of women represented according to race, ethnicity, age, ability, socio-economic background and other defining factors,” said Speers.

Much of the gain in representation for women is thanks to the NDP, which ran a slate that the advocacy group Equal Voice identified as more than 59 per cent women and gender-diverse candidates.

According to The Tyee’s count, the party has elected 31 women and 15 men.

Under the NDP’s equity mandate, when an elected female NDP MLA retires, she can be replaced only by another woman. When a male MLA retires, the replacement has to be either a woman or a member of another equity-seeking group. The mandate has been mostly followed except in extenuating circumstances, such as in 2020 when the party failed to find an eligible woman or a member of another equity-seeking group to run in Stikine.

Winning NDP candidates also include 12 women and eight men who are either Indigenous, Black or other people of colour, together comprising just under half of the party’s caucus.

The Conservative Party of BC ran a slate that was 74 per cent men, leading to the election of 28 men and 17 women.

Just under half of the BC Green Party’s candidates were women and gender-diverse people, but the only two people elected from the party are men.

Of the 93 candidates from all parties elected across the province, just under one-third are Indigenous, Black or other people of colour.

In the 2021 census, 34.4 per cent of British Columbians identified as part of a racialized group or population.

Ideally the legislature would reflect the demographics of the province, Speers said, adding that it matters who gets appointed to cabinet positions and which portfolios they are in. It’s also important who is represented in the senior civil service and whether decision-makers are applying a Gender-based Analysis Plus lens so that there’s sensitivity to all intersecting identity factors when implementing public policy or delivering services.

The federal government, which is committed to using it, defines Gender-based Analysis Plus as “an intersectional analysis that goes beyond biological (sex) and socio-cultural (gender) differences to consider other factors, such as age, disability, education, ethnicity, economic status, geography (including rurality), language, race, religion, and sexual orientation.”

“There’s more work to do in terms of creating and sustaining a representative democracy,” said Speers.  [Tyee]

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