Municipal Politics
Hannah Gale was elected to Calgary City Council in 1917, becoming the first woman ever elected to any political office in Canada.
In 1936, Barbara Hanley in Webbwood, Ontario became the first woman ever elected as a mayor in Canada; in 1951, Charlotte Whitton in Ottawa became the first woman elected mayor of a major Canadian city.
Other prominent women mayors in Canada have included June Rowlands and Barbara Hall in Toronto, True Davidson in the former Toronto suburb of East York, Frances Nunziata in York, Dianne Haskett and Anne Marie DeCicco-Best in London, Hazel McCallion in Mississauga, Marion Dewar and Jacquelin Holzman in Ottawa, Jan Reimer in Edmonton, Gretchen Brewin in Victoria, Susan Fennell in Brampton, Jamie Lim in Timmins, Dorothy Wyatt in St. John's, Elsie Wayne in Saint John, Helen Cooper in Kingston, Janice Laking in Barrie, Lorna Jackson in Vaughan, Andrée Boucher in Quebec City, Dorothy Corrigan in Charlottetown, Moira Leiper Ducharme in Halifax, Susan Thompson in Winnipeg, Grace Hartman and Marianne Matichuk in Sudbury, Dusty Miller and Lynn Peterson in Thunder Bay, Ione Christensen, Kathy Watson and Bev Buckway in Whitehorse, Elizabeth Kishkon in Windsor and Elisapee Sheutiapik and Madeleine Redfern in Iqaluit.
In 1984, Daurene Lewis was elected mayor of Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, becoming the first black woman to be elected as a mayor in North America.
A study released by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in early 2009 found that women outnumbered men as municipal chief administrative officers or city managers – a position which is hired, not elected – in Canada. However, they still lagged significantly behind men as elected municipal councillors and mayors, representing just 23 per cent of all elected municipal officials. Only in Canada's three territories, Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories, did women represent more than one-third of elected municipal officials at the time of the study, and the Yukon was the only province or territory in all of Canada where more than one-third of all mayors were women.
The FCM has set the goal of increasing the number of women in municipal government to at least 30 per cent by 2026, and has identified a number of strategies to do so, including mentoring programs, active recruitment of women to serve on municipal boards and committees, and implementing work-life balance programs, such as day care services, to facilitate the participation of women with young children.
Among major Canadian cities, women currently comprise the majority on Mississauga City Council in Mississauga, Ontario, with women holding the mayoralty and six of the 11 ward seats; and Waterloo City Council in Waterloo, Ontario, with women holding the mayoralty and four of the seven ward seats. Toronto City Council also surpassed the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' 30 per cent target in the 2010 election, with 15 women councillors representing exactly one-third of the full council.
Read more about this topic: Women In Canadian Politics
Famous quotes containing the words municipal and/or politics:
“No sane local official who has hung up an empty stocking over the municipal fireplace, is going to shoot Santa Claus just before a hard Christmas.”
—Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944)
“From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.”
—Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)