Samoa is a small, isolated island nation in the South Pacific Ocean with a population of 196,000 inhabitants. But the Polynesian country is a place the NWT could learn from.
So states a GNWT discussion paper issued last week entitled, “Temporary special measures to increase the representation of women in the NWT Legislative Assembly."
Prepared by the office of Speaker Jackson Lafferty, the paper's stated goal is, "intended to generate discussion on the advancement of these goals."
There is no doubt women are under-represented in elected chambers across Canada. British Columbia's provincial legislature has 38 per cent women, Manitoba 25 per cent and Prince Edward Island sits at 18 per cent. The NWT is by far the lowest at 10.5 per cent, with only two women serving as MLAs out of 19 constituencies.
So in an ideal world, there should be eight, nine or even 10 women MLAs. But it is not an ideal world.
The NWT has had a woman premier, when in 1991 Nellie Cournoyea became only the second woman in Canada – and the first Indigenous woman – to be elected first minister of a province or territory.
For any number of reasons, women aren't getting elected. There are often instances where a slate of candidates in a given constituency is all male.
So what is to be done about this situation? After all, our elected assemblies should reflect the population as a whole, in order to have balanced input on policy making.
The discussion paper states that in 1990, the United Nations determined that 30 per cent is the critical threshold of women in a parliament required to bring about significant and lasting policy changes.
"The strongest determinant of the number of women elected to public office is the number of
women who actually run," states the discussion paper.
In the 2015 territorial election, there were nine women on the ballots. Of that, two were elected – Yellowknife Centre MLA Julie Green and Range Lake MLA Caroline Cochrane, who made it into cabinet – with four others finishing in second place. Two of those four lost by a close margin.
The discussion paper proposes we adopt the Samoan model. That country's constitution was recently amended to guarantee a minimum of five seats in the legislature for women.
Under that system, states the paper, if a general election returns fewer than five women, additional seats are added to meet this benchmark. The women candidates who attained the highest percentage of votes, but were unsuccessful in the election, are deemed elected in these additional seats.
While Yellowknifer supports a more equal gender balance in politics, it is leery of awarding un-elected candidates seats in the legislative assembly.
Speaker Lafferty suggests the artificial gender parity in Samoa is "working well for them” but here in the Northwest Territories it's unlikely women put into office by this method will have much credibility in the eyes of other MLAs or the general public.
For instance, where will these women stand with the female MLAs who obtained their seats by winning the popular vote?
If the idea is to make female candidates “equal” to men this system doesn't cut it. In reality, what the paper shows is yet another inherent flaw of consensus government.
Though still lagging behind in parity, the provinces and Yukon have more female representatives because the political parties competing for votes in these jurisdictions have made an effort to field more women at the ballot box.
More than 150 women ran in last night's provincial election in Ontario. More than 50 per cent of the NDP's slate of candidates were women. Of 107 electoral districts, seven of them had all-female candidates representing the three major parties. These stats virtually guarantee no matter what happens a good portion of the MPPs elected last night will be women.
The simple fact is, in today's political climate, a party seeking to form a government is not likely to receive much support if there are too few female candidates. But without party politics to organize and select candidates it's less likely women will run.
And you don't need to turn to Samoa to figure that out.