The recent municipal election results suggest Nova Scotian voters are coming around to the same notion that a few political junkies have harboured for some time. In general, women in public life outperform men.
Now, we all know that such sweeping generalizations can be dangerously misleading and, make no mistake, there are plenty of good men serving admirably in the public life of the province. The point is that women are taking their rightful place in that maledominated realm, and Nova Scotia is the better for it.
The observation that women — generally — outperform men is based on the small sample size offered by the political institution that’s most familiar to me — Nova Scotia’s legislature. While women account for about a third of its members — the most ever — their presence far exceeds their numbers.
Casual observers of the place may not arrive at the same conclusion. Question period, which provides most of the political theatre and therefore earns most of the news coverage, is dominated by the party leaders, all of whom are men.
But when the glare of the media spotlight dims and the house gets down to the real work of law-making, the women on the opposition benches shine.
The Liberals have seven women MLAS, more than either of the opposition parties, but because they are members of the governing party and the government wants to get out of the legislature as fast as possible, their opportunities to distinguish themselves are limited.
The government tends to suffer politically when the legislature sits, so standard operating procedure has been for government members to abstain from debate in order to speed along the business of the house and limit the potential for political damage to the government.
Liberals are, however, fully aware that women are a bigger political asset than ever. Indeed, some party members barely mask their disappointment that there are no woman in the race to succeed Premier Stephen McNeil.
Many Liberals had hoped that Bedford MLA and Community Services Minister Kelly Regan would run for the leadership and had she done so she would have been an early favourite to win. But Regan declined and denied Liberals the bragging rights many of them dearly covet. They want to be the party that delivers Nova Scotia’s first female premier.
The woman who most recently led a party in the legislature is Pictou West Tory Karla MacFarlane, who served as leader of the opposition and interim leader of the Progressive Conservatives after Jamie Baillie resigned and before Tim Houston won the job full time.
MacFarlane did far more than exceed expectations. She excelled to the point where many Tories were left wondering why she didn’t seek the job on a permanent basis.
Four of the PCS’ 18 MLAS are women, and the party has some work to do because of the 16 candidates it has nominated to run in the next election, just three are women.
Women in the legislature focus on public policy and its impact on people, while the men — some, not all — practise politics.
The NDP is the champion of women in public life. Four of the NDP’S five-member legislative caucus are women and many regular observers of the legislature rate those MLAS as the strongest opposition members in the house.
The only male New Democrat in the legislature is party leader Gary Burrill who, to his credit, is more than willing to share the spotlight with the talented women in his caucus, Claudia Chender, Lisa Roberts and Susan Leblanc.
NDP newcomer Kendra Coombes won Cape Breton Centre in a byelection earlier this year, but because the government hasn’t called the legislature back since March 10, she has yet to take her seat.
Beyond their sitting MLAS, the NDP has nominated four candidates for the next provincial election, three of whom are women.
New Democrats require constituencies to recruit candidates from “equity seeking groups” including women, racialized communities, people with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ communities. The party fully expects that at least half of its candidates in the next election will be women.
It’s hard — maybe impossible — to put a finger on the reason women perform so well in the legislature, but if pressed I’d suggest it’s because they tend to be less partisan than many of the men in the place.
Here’s one more generalization, no less dangerous than the first. Women in the legislature focus on public policy and its impact on people, while the men — some, not all — practise politics.
Women are gaining on men in the public life of the province, and maybe it’s because people are looking for more empathy and less political posturing.
Women in the legislature focus on public policy and its impact on people, while the men — some, not all — practise politics.
