Many years ago, when I was starting to find my way as an adult, I became active with the women's community in St. John’s. We worked with and challenged people at all levels of policy and law, including politicians.
Now my interest in politics does not fall along party lines; politics for me has always been a small-p kind of word, connected to community rather than the legislature.
But many of the women I met, worked with and learned from, felt differently. Their politics was as community-based as mine, but they also saw opportunities with working within the party system, either at the provincial level in Newfoundland and Labrador, or on the federal scene.
Women may make up just over half of the population, but in the House of Assembly, we account for less than a fourth of the seats.
I’ve always respected those who put themselves forward for public office. It’s not an easy job.
I remember being surprised sometimes to learn of the party affiliations of the people I was working with. Some of those feminists were New Democrats, others were Liberals, others were Tories.
One of the reasons I was surprised is because those differences only came to light when an election rolled around. Otherwise, these women worked together on common goals, shared ideas, egged each other on, laughed, told stories, and mobilized for change.
The differences, such as they were, came around when the campaigns kicked into gear. In the late 1970s and through the ’80s, there were not that many women in elected politics. Unfortunately, even today, there are still not nearly enough.
Women may make up just over half of the population, but in the House of Assembly, we account for less than a fourth of the seats.
The late Hazel McIsaac was the first woman to win a seat in the post-Confederation House of Assembly, and that was in 1975. Four years later, Lynn Verge and Hazel Newhook, both Progressive Conservatives, became the first women to serve in cabinet.
It felt then like a barrier had been breached, and it had. However, the change that some of us hoped would come quickly instead evolved at a pace that has been and is frustratingly slow.
There are other disheartening things, too. Women who’ve worked inside the party system have told me about the things they have had to hear and bear. It’s not just in the backrooms, either.
Last fall, in the House of Assembly, PC MHA Barry Petten described Liberal Lisa Dempster — a cabinet minister — as “cackling like a schoolgirl.” I found it telling that Petten’s apologies — he made more than one, as it was that kind of a story — included the so-typical defence that he’s a good father, and that what he said was not “intended to be the way it’s been portrayed.”
I’m appalled by what I’ve seen in darker corners, on social media and in online comments. I wrote about some of the cyber abuse former minister Cathy Bennett experienced in a previous column. Because it is abuse and we have to support the candidates who are calling it out because sometimes, in doing that, they become the targets for ever more abuse.
Despite this, I’m hopeful. I always am. We have a record number of women running this year compared to other elections. We also have Gemma Hickey making history as the first non-binary candidate.
I’m delighted by the co-operative and collaborative spirit I’ve seen among women candidates and their supporters across party affiliations. We have significant problems to solve, and we need many voices at the table to present the spectrum of opinions, choices and experiences needed for good decision-making.
I’d like to see that co-operative and collaborative spirit continue after the election, now a little more than a week away. It would be exciting to see a cross-party agenda emerge, one focused on building and supporting communities instead of dividing them. The possibilities are infinite.
Martha Muzychka is a writer and researcher in St. John’s. She never misses the opportunity to vote.