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Self-Employed Workers Organize: Law, Policy
and Unions
by Cynthia J. Cranford, Judy Fudge, Eric Tucker and
Leah F. Volko. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005.
Traditionally, self-employment has been synonymous with individual entrepreneurship and has resided outside the ambit of labour law and collective
representation. There is, however, another class of
self-employed worker that often shares more in common with an employee than entrepreneur. These are
individuals who differ dramatically from the ideal selfemployed type, since they do not employ anyone else
but themselves, own very little in the way of capital,
offer their labour exclusively to a single contracting
party, and exercise little control over their own production. In what sense can someone like this, lying
between the status of an employee and entrepreneur,
be defined appropriately? Do these small-scale selfemployed workers require special labour protection?
If so, what should it look like? If not, how does one
facilitate the collective organization of these workers,
while at the same time preventing their vulnerability
to other techniques for restructuring the employment
relationship (i.e., contracting out)?
These are the central questions of Self-Employed
Workers Organize: Law, Policy and Unions, and it
is no accident that Cynthia Cranford, Judy Fudge,
Eric Tucker and Leah Volko are the ones doing the
asking. All four bring a wealth of experience and
first-hand knowledge of the difficulties facing workers in what has come to be known as the “precarious employment sector.” This is a book that the
authors have clearly been burning to write. Just
pages in, we are told that “in some small way, this
book contributes to self-employed workers efforts
to better their conditions by telling the stories of
their struggles.”
What follows is part case study — four case study
chapters written by each of the authors — and part
general analysis. In the co-written introduction, the
authors bring us face to face with four groups of
workers — newspaper deliverers, rural route mail
339
couriers, personal care givers, and professional editors. Despite outward differences in their work and
social status, all four are described as sharing two
important characteristics: their employment relations diverge from the norm that has served as the
lynchpin of Canadian labour law throughout the
postwar period (i.e., the full-time permanent employee) and each of these groups has tried to use
the law to obtain collective bargaining rights, but in
each instance, their self-employed status was a contentious legal issue.
The two synthesis chapters that bookend this
study nicely situate the specific cases in the broader
context of self-employment work; illustrating the
problems of distinguishing between employees and
the self-employed for the purposes of labour protection. The authors are nevertheless unequivocal
when it comes to stating their conclusions. Despite
the difficulties noted above, workers caught in between the world of paid work and entrepreneurship
should have access to collective representation. The
authors readily admit, however, that this is not the
only solution for workers lying in the grey zone
between employee and entrepreneur. Though “there
are pressing sociological, normative and policy reasons for extending bargaining rights to these groups
of workers” the authors maintain that there is no
single workplace representation model that meets
the needs of all the self-employed workers highlighted in the book. So, rather than offering a neatly
packaged legislative solution, the book emphasizes
the “plurality of representational forms and mechanisms” needed for achieving the protections granted
to workers in similar situations.
For some, the case-study route taken to arrive at
these conclusions may be akin to a maddeningly
difficult slalom run. Economists would no doubt like
to sink their teeth into the introductory and concluding chapters, where the synthesis and policy
recommendations reside. But once readers start in
on the first of the case studies, Eric Tucker’s fascinating study of Toronto Star newspaper carriers, they
will no doubt be hooked. The authors should be
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340 Reviews/Comptes rendus
commended for maintaining the individual interest
of each of their respective cases, while at the same
time enforcing a common structure, in which they
describe the socio-economic context of the workers
in question, the history collective representation at
work, the legal framework and barriers that they have
confronted in trying to organize collectively. As someone interested in labour markets but with no formal
legal background, this format proved invaluable.
There are, of course, perils in using detailed case
studies as the lynchpin for a book, especially those
cases that are based on informant interviews and
detailed legal analyses of decisions — namely, that
the non-specialist reader often does not care about
the material as much as the authors do. This problem does not afflict the book as a whole, but when
it does, it can be rough going. For example, when
Tucker writes about the British Columbia carriers’
drive to organize, he lists all ten factors that the labour
board raised as relevant to the determination of the
carriers’ employment status. This one unbroken paragraph takes up an entire page. For non-experts, this
listing would be no more illuminating here than it
would be in context. And this is in the first chapter, an
early place to potentially lose readers.
Happily, as each of the cases gathers its own
steam, all four authors take full control of the material. Fudge’s analysis, in chapter 2, of rural mail
carriers, is typically poignant and illuminating. Who
would have thought that prior to 2004, nearly 6,000
rural mail couriers used their own vehicles instead
of Canada Post trucks to deliver mail and if injured
were not entitled to compensation benefits. In the
end they were organized, but Fudge is under no illusions that this is THE model for other groups to
follow: “Rural route mail workers are … fortunate:
they work for a single corporation that has a highly
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
organised workforce [and] the lion’s share are represented by a militant union committed to organising all the workers in the sector.” Such conditions
are clearly not present within the personal-care sector, the subject of Cranford’s chapter 3 study. The
chapter ends with three regulatory scenarios that
could emerge as a means of protecting personal-care
workers. No simple solutions are to be found here.
The final case in chapter 4, that of freelance editors, was perhaps the most interesting, if only because as an author, the editor’s work is often the
most crucial function of the book publishing business (this is why authors still use publishers rather
than the Internet to publish their work). Yet, increasingly it seems, publishers subcontract the work to a
host of freelance editors, where work is often sporadic and low paid.
It is often said that passion is the enemy of precision. Yet, in this instance, the authors have generated a precisely worded and passionately argued case
for the need to look at the world of self-employment
as it is — complex and multi-layered but with the
possibility of improvement for those workers most
weakened by the particularities of their employment
situation and the vagaries of ill-equipped legal protection. This is an informative and valuable book
for researchers and policymakers alike. So in the
spirit of the non-standard work covered in this volume, I would advise prospective readers of SelfEmployed Workers Organize to approach it
unconventionally, beginning with either the introduction or conclusion, then skipping to any of the
cases that seem personally of most interest and then
starting in earnest from there.
RAFAEL GOMEZ, Glendon College, York University and
Institute of Management, London School of Economics
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The Companies We Keep: Corporate
Governance for a Democratic Society
by Allan C. Hutchinson. Irwin Law Inc., 2005.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal
sharing of blessings;
the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal
sharing of misery.”
Winston Churchill
Much like a handyman who sees a crack in the plaster and decides it is time to tear down the house,
Allan Hutchinson observes recent corporate scandals and decides that we are in dire need of a new
model for the corporation. It is the maintained thesis of the text that individual acts of turpitude are
merely a symptom of the current conception of corporations as legal entities engaged in the pursuit of
maximizing the wealth of shareholders. This conception not only leads to malfeasance on the part of
corporate officers, but also harms society in general. Hutchinson leads with scandals to get our attention but then quickly tells us not to look too long
upon them as the true problems are structural and
the damage corporations do stems from their very
nature, is not isolated to shareholders, and is societal
in scope. Therefore, changes to corporate governance must examine the activities and the very existence of corporations in an “encompassing social and
political context.”
The central tenet of the book is that the concentration of power in corporations inhibits the progress
of democracy. The terms democracy, democratic
well-being, democratic society, and other variants
on this theme are scattered throughout the book.
What is less clear is the meaning of the word as
employed by Hutchinson. We are asked to consider
democracy as “appreciated in its most noble sense.”
There are several clues as to what this means. Democratic advancement is found in making “the corporation work in the broader public interest and for
the greater good of society.” We are told that democracy demands that all Canadians “share in the
341
fortunes and misfortunes of the community.” Democracy demands a reduction in the gap between
the governed and their governors. Hutchinson returns to the term “gap” and with deft legerdemain
switches democratic advancement to reducing gaps
in living standards and wealth. One feels lost in
Wonderland as democracy means what the author
chooses it to mean.
Hutchinson graciously allows that corporations
are not the root of all evil. Reading the text though
might lead a reader to conclude that while not all,
certainly most evil can be laid at the feet of corporations. Hutchinson seeks to harness the productive
capacity of corporations while reigning in what he
sees as “regressive effects.” One step on this path is
to “realize” corporations are not the private property of shareholders. This is akin to harnessing your
neighbour’s horse after it’s been fed. It is also interesting that the focus is on large corporations. You
would not want to hitch your wagon to a fledgling
company lest you share more misfortune than fortune. In the distinction between large and small corporations we see that it is not the corporate form
that is objectionable, but rather the assets of successful corporations that are desirable.
The ability of the state to direct the resources of
corporations rests on the premise that corporations
are creatures of the state and rely on the state for
their existence and the rule of law that protects their
markets. The same can be said for other state sanctioned economic actors: doctors, lawyers, dentists,
taxi operators, and barbers. Given the coercive
power of the state, all economic actors benefit from
the rule of law and therefore the state has the right
to direct all economic output. If they come first for
the corporations, who will speak?
It is with a gnostic’s certainty of divine revelation that Hutchinson plants guideposts for the New
Model Corporation. Outright confiscation of productive resources is to be avoided because absent
an entrepreneurial class output falls off. Rather, this
class and the contributors of capital need to be har-
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342 Reviews/Comptes rendus
nessed. The sharing rule that will keep them productive is nowhere mentioned. However, Hutchinson
thinks that allowing stakeholders (a broadly-defined
group of actors whose lives are affected by the corporation to some degree) board representation will
be one step in ensuring corporations act to further
society’s well-being. Individuals have utility functions and homogeneous groups may have highly
correlated utility functions. Society does not have a
utility function and a board trying to represent society’s desires will resemble Babel. Hutchinson
envisions a board with members representing the
shareholders, workers, and the public. Setting aside
the overt taking of shareholder rights, the concept
of public constituency directors is interesting. A
corporate governance commission whose provenance is unclear will maintain lists of acceptable
public constituency directors. This clerisy of wellmeaning individuals will let us know what is good
for us.
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
Hutchinson’s justification for societal representation in the oversight of corporations rests on the
facts that corporations are large, ubiquitous, and
creatures of the state. His prescriptions for wealth
redistribution and worker empowerment emanate
from the waste heap of failed collectivism. His faith
in government directives and the kindness of strangers is touching, but is hardly a sound basis for public policy.
I began with a quote from Winston Churchill.
Let me end by paraphrasing him. Capitalism is the
worst way to run an economy except all those other
methods that have been tried from time to time.
MARK R. HUSON, Pocklington Professor of Private
Enterprise, University of Alberta School of Business
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Governing with the Charter: Legislative and
Judicial Activism and Framers’ Intent
James B. Kelly. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005.
Wow! What a breath of fresh academic air! Canadians, once informed by this truly remarkable study,
will never be able to view their 1982 Charter of
Rights and Freedoms the same way. Finally, an intellectually rigorous, superbly comprehensive, and
lucidly written analysis of the Cabinet’s, the Department of Justice’s, the Supreme Court’s, and Parliament’s coordinated governance concerning all
Charter rights. Kelly’s stupendously revisionist Governing with the Charter calls into question the very
raison d’être for Canada’s ongoing, misleading, and
terribly ruinous civil war between the Calgary-based
Charterphobes and the largely central Canadian
Charterphiles. Twenty-five years after the 1982
Charter, a great many of Canada’s political leaders,
academics, and journalists still do not understand
the full scope of the political and constitutional
“revolution” that is Trudeau’s primary legacy
(Behiels 2003). Section 52 of the Charter stipulates
that the “Constitution of Canada is the supreme law
of Canada.” The Charter is the very heart of the
people’s dimension of our constitution. At all times,
it should function seamlessly under the coordinated
guardianship of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of governance. It is time to lay to rest
the hoary myth of parliamentary supremacy as well
as the newly-propagated myth of judicial supremacy,
both of which are the stock-in-trade of the Charterphobes. Judicial review has always been at the very
centre of Canadian federal governance as Ottawa,
the provinces, and corporate Canada pursued their
respective interests and interpretations of the British North America Act, 1867.
Our misconstrued Charter wars and misguided
attacks on Canada’s Supreme Court are not new.
Ross Lambertson’s remarkable Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930–
1968 and Christopher MacLennan’s tightly crafted
Toward the Charter: Canadians and the Demand for
a National Bill of Rights, 1929–1960 analyze the
343
largely unsuccessful struggles of ordinary working
men and women for a meaningful application of their
limited British-Canadian civil liberties. Their myriad
civil libertarian and human rights organizations
failed to achieve their goal, an entrenched Charter
of Rights and Freedoms. Why? No doubt partly because the movement was weak and divided. But the
central explanation resides in the Charterphobic
character of Canada’s British-Canadian political,
social, economic, and legal élites who controlled our
governance system at all levels until the 1960s.
Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s precisely choreographed statutory 1960 Bill of Rights was never intended to usher in a genuine civil and human rights
revolution. Its British-Canadian framers’ focus was
exclusively on protecting largely theoretical British civil liberties by curtailing executive tyranny;
that is, the federal Cabinet, in the hopes of restoring and embellishing the mythic golden-age of parliamentary supremacy. Diefenbaker ensured that his
Bill of Rights did not mandate the Supreme Court to
carry out substantive judicial review of existing
laws. Nor could it invalidate new federal laws if
Parliament sent the message that it clearly intended
its legislation to override the very narrow traditional
civil liberties outlined in his Bill. Indeed, one can
argue that Diefenbaker’s goal was to prevent the far
more comprehensive conception of human rights,
as expressed in the American and French designed
1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,
from taking root in Canada’s “conservative” political and judicial cultures and parliamentary system.
Diefenbaker’s ill-conceived attempt to stem the
rising tide of the human rights movement was a dramatic failure. Why and how did an increasing majority of Canadians from all regions, social classes,
and religious and ethnic backgrounds come together
during a concerted twenty-year campaign to achieve
a genuine rights revolution culminating in an entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Kelly’s
study, unlike those of Lambertson and MacLennan,
does not attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of the rights revolution from the bottom up. This
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344 Reviews/Comptes rendus
task is left for other Charter scholars to undertake.
Vaguely aware of emergent human rights movement,
Kelly considers it of secondary importance. This is
unfortunate because he weakens his own thesis.
Widespread social changes strengthened immeasurably the scope and depth of Canada’s human rights
movement and this process had a profound impact
on a small but significant minority of Canada’s
emerging social, political, and legal élites who aided
and abetted this movement. Philip Girard’s groundbreaking Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (2005)
bears witness to this important phenomenon.
Kelly emphatically rejects the court-centred approach that has dominated the debate. He rightly
shifts the overly narrow and highly misleading focus of the overly polemical academic and public
debates from the Supreme Court to all the political
actors responsible for framing and then implementing the Charter. The core theme of Governing with
the Charter centres on deciphering and analyzing
the comprehensive legislative activism — primarily
executive and bureaucratic — that was generated to
serve as a counterweight to the clearly intended and
anticipated judicial activism inherent in the Charter, the people’s package of the Constitution Act,
1982. Kelly analyzes the evolving nature of the intent of the Charter’s central framers, Trudeau’s Cabinet and senior Justice and PCO mandarins, and the
MPs and Senators on the Special Joint Committee.
Hounded constantly by the anti-Charter premiers
since the early 1970s, the framers began with a weak
Charter but then radicalized the document quite dramatically once Trudeau gained the upper hand in
his political and judicial struggles with the premiers.
Kelly does not consider the anti-Charter premiers
and their coterie of supporters as framers. From the
outset, their intent, he demonstrates, was to derail
by every political and judicial means possible a charter they considered “revolutionary,” a veritable threat
to parliamentary supremacy — in reality executive
supremacy — and Canadian federalism.
The framers radicalized the Charter in two steps.
First, they assiduously orchestrated the televised
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proceedings of the Special Joint Committee to coordinate support from the entire Canadian human
rights community, including the radicalized and
highly organized women’s and Aboriginal movements. Second, Trudeau effectively exploited the
Supreme Court’s landmark 1981 Patriation decision
which declared the Canada Bill legal and terminated
the premier’s “historical” veto over the amendment
and Canadianization of the British North America
Act, 1867. His hand strengthened, Trudeau accepted
the recalcitrant premiers’, namely Lougheed’s,
7/50 amending formula in exchange for the “revolutionizing” Charter, albeit one with a time-limited
notwithstanding clause applying to sections 2 and 7
to 15. The deed was done!
Having established the bone fides of the intended
activist Charter — a flexible instrument that summons the Supreme Court to move well past its “frozen rights” philosophy, Kelly brilliantly analyzes all
of the Supreme Court’s numerous Charter decisions
— two-thirds of the total between 1982–2003 —
pertaining to the controversial area of legal rights
which had fuelled the consolidation of the human
rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He demonstrates convincingly that the Supreme Court, in
checking the discretionary conduct of the police by
infusing the crime control model with important elements of due process, “has deepened constitutional
supremacy because it has required those exercising
power on behalf of the state to do so in a manner
consistent with the Charter” (p. 108). Stirred but not
shaken, this balanced approach to policing legal
rights strengthened dramatically the democratic
bond between Canadian citizens and their state.
How was this necessary evolution in the interpretation and implementation of rights accomplished
so smoothly? Kelly’s groundbreaking chapter,
“Guardians of the Constitution” reveals the emergence of a highly orchestrated model of coordinated
constitutionalism whereby all of Canada’s political
actors, institutions and agencies — with Cabinet and
the Department of Justice at the core — responded
in a tight partnership to the imperatives of Canada’s
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intended “activist” Charter. Of 175 statutes reviewed
by the Supreme Court between 1982–2003, only 64
were invalidated, the vast majority pre-dated the
Charter and were manifestly discriminatory. The
Supreme Court, as one of three central guardians of
the constitution, had no option but to declare a range
of statutes, partly or entirely, unconstitutional. It is
largely these early decisions that the court-centred
Charterphobes use as evidence of excessive and
unwarranted judicial activism by a Supreme Court
intent on imposing its policy preferences. Kelly’s
in-depth analysis of all the Court’s Charter decisions
virtually obliterates all the Charter critics’ arguments. The Supreme Court’s approach to post-1982
statutes, Kelly points out, is very nuanced and imaginative, especially so since 1993. First, the Supreme Court spelt out a cogent “least drastic means”
test for section 1, the brilliantly crafted reasonable
limits clause, forcing lower courts and all legislators to think twice before using section 1 to circumvent the Charter. Two, the Supreme Court has resorted
to suspended decisions in dealing with unconstitutional legislation, thereby enjoining executives and
legislators to reconsider and amend their laws to
conform to the imperatives of the Charter. In short,
coordinate constitutionalism in action spurred on by
a court sensitive to its and the other actors’ guardianship responsibilities.
Kelly tackles head on the Charter critics, led by
Québécois nationalists and secessionists, allegation
that Trudeau’s Charter was designed primarily as
an instrument of centralization for imposing national
standards on the provinces. Consequently, the Charter, they contend, is intrinsically and indubitably
destructive of Canadian federalism. “Poppycock,”
retorts Kelly. All the of the empirical evidence proves
that Canada’s Supreme Court sees itself as the guardian of democracy, federalism, and the Charter. In
its role as umpire of Canadian federalism, the
Court’s interpretation of the Charter demonstrates
a comprehensive respect for provincial autonomy,
using the Constitution Act as a shield to the point of
embracing a limited degree of provincial asymmetry. Once provincial cabinets and their Departments
345
of Justice instituted Charter-vetted practices, since
1990 the Supreme Court has invalidated very few
provincial statutes involving rights matters. Governing with the Charter is initiated by provincial cabinets and the courts react, rather than vice versa as
claimed by the Charter critics.
In his highly original and revealing final chapter, Kelly analyzes why and how governing with the
Charter effectively begins with the legislative activism, federal and provincial, operating in a rights
culture environment. Ottawa took the lead in this
development and it is slowly permeating provincial
cabinets but not their legislatures. At the centre of
this legislative activism since 1990 are the federal
Cabinet, the Department of Justice, and its branches
in every line department, all of which have embraced
fully their constitutional guardianship roles in the
defence and the promotion of Charter rights by participating in a novel and complex Charter-vetting
process for all pertinent legislation.
Kelly accepts the critics’ argument that there is a
crucial democratic deficit but this is not the Supreme
Court’s fault. The virtual dominance from the outset of the Charter-vetting process by the federal
Cabinet and the Department of Justice has prevented
Parliament from playing its constitutionally mandated guardianship role vis-à-vis the Charter. Kelly
makes a very convincing case that the Charter review process should be initiated by Parliament, that
is, by well-informed, institutionalized committees
of the House of Commons and the Senate. Kelly maintains somewhat optimistically that this process will ensure that Canada’s rights culture permeates in a
comprehensive manner all of Parliament. This coordinated constitutionalism will reduce dramatically the
need for the Supreme Court to suspend or invalidate
Charter-sensitive legislation. Given the nature of Canadian society, it is not likely that there will ever be
unanimity on the need to embrace uncritically a comprehensive rights culture. Perhaps the best that can be
expected is that most Canadians come to understand
the strengths and weaknesses of their “activist” Charter as well as the respective roles of all of the political
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actors in the executives, the bureaucracies, the legislators, and the courts, in the effective governance with
the Charter under a parliamentary regime of constitutional supremacy. Kelly’s magnificent Governing with
the Charter is, by far, the first and ideal place to begin
that learning process.
REFERENCE
Behiels, M.D. 2003. “Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Legacy: The
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” in The
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Reflections on the Charter after Twenty Years, ed. J.E. Magnet et al. Toronto: LexisNexis Butterworths.
MICHAEL D. BEHIELS, Professor of Canadian History,
University of Ottawa
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
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It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run
for Office
by Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
The question of why women continue to be significantly underrepresented in representative political
institutions is one that has been the focus of much
research in the United States and Canada. The two
countries rank 68th and 44th respectively amongst the
188 ranked on the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s
Women in National Parliaments 1 list and behind a
mix of countries that includes Rwanda (1st), Denmark (6th), Iraq (27th) and Australia (30th). The absence of formal barriers restricting women’s political
participation and positive changes in women’s employment, income, and educational achievements
have proven insufficient for significantly increasing the number of women who choose to contest
and win elections at various levels of government.
Research focused on structural barriers — the
single member plurality system, for example — and
situational factors — the gender gap in income and
pink-collar employment ghettos — has provided
only an incomplete understanding of why women
continue to be significantly underrepresented. But
the research conducted by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox in the United States and reported on in
the book, It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t
Run for Office, goes some distance toward uncovering the missing pieces of this puzzle by focusing
the lens on the concept of political ambition and on
why women make up a significantly smaller share
of those nominated by political parties to contest elections. In their words, “this book is about political ambition: why men have it, and why women don’t” (p. 4).
While political ambition plays a larger role in determining who gets nominated in the more candidatecentred electoral process in the US, it nevertheless
provides insight into Canadian electoral outcomes.
The strength of the book stems in part from the
research strategy adopted by the authors. Much of
existing research in this area consists of surveys of
347
women and men who have run for office or of those
who have been elected; while these provide important insight into who decides to contest elections
and the reasons behind their decisions, they tell us
little about differences between the women and men
who consider but ultimately decide against running
for office. Lawless and Fox instead conduct a national survey of and subsequent interviews with a
stratified sample of women and men selected from
the four professions from which political candidates
are normally drawn: lawyer, business leader, educator, and political activist.2 By doing so they effectively limit gender differences in objective
qualifications and experience, as well as political
interest among the respondents, factors that play a
role in shaping political ambition and perceived electoral potential.
Not surprisingly, the authors find that women’s
greater responsibility for household tasks and
childcare play a role in their decreased willingness
to consider running for office. They also find that
as children, male respondents were more likely to
discuss politics and to be encouraged to run for office by their parents. The latter is found to continue
into adulthood, with women receiving less encouragement from family and friends.
Most interestingly perhaps, the authors identify
the existence of a “gendered psyche” in political
ambition that develops in part through traditional
gender role socialization. Women reveal a tendency
to overestimate the set of qualifications necessary
for running for office and they combine this with a
tendency to underestimate the qualifications that
they themselves possess. The result is that women
are significantly less willing to consider running for
office and to actually throw their hats in the ring. In
short, they possess less political ambition. This finding is doubly important because self-assessments of
qualifications are found to play a larger role in shaping women’s standing for office calculus than men’s.
Direct recruitment of candidates by political parties could help to offset the gendered impact of this
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tendency, but their findings suggest that a “masculinized ethos” within political parties results in men
being considered and recruited as potential nominees and candidates far more often than women,
even when women possess similar or even stronger
qualifications for the position. And again this result
is doubly important because recruitment plays a
larger role in shaping women’s decisions to run than
men. As such, efforts undertaken by political parties to recruit women are crucial for increasing their
levels of representation at both the nomination and
candidate stages of elections.
The implications for these findings are clear; in the
absence of strong incentives for political parties to increase the number of women that they nominate to
contest seats, or of an electoral system that simplifies
the adoption of gender quotas and targets, women’s
political underrepresentation is unlikely to be mitigated
anytime soon. Traditional gender role socialization and
CANADIAN PUBLIC POLICY – ANALYSE DE
the actions of political parties continue to exert a powerful force in driving home the message that politics
“is a man’s world,” a message strong enough to ensure that the best and brightest American (and one
could easily argue, Canadian) women remain largely
absent from representative political institutions.
NOTES
1
This ranking refers to the situation as of 30 April 2006.
See the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Women in National
Parliaments, found at www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm.
2
The Citizen Political Ambition Survey consisted of a
standard mail survey conducted between July 2001 and
August 2002 with 3,614 women and men, and subsequent
follow-up phone interviews in July and August of 2003
with 100 of the men and 100 of the women who completed the original mail survey.
BRENDA O’NEILL, Department of Political Science,
University of Calgary
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