Scanned, recopied or Internet copy, if there are errors, please e-mail me with corrections: Opening comments: More at the end. Globe and Mail - Nov. 20 & 21, 2009 - By Marcus Gee, mgee@globeandmail.com - comment. Women too soft to run for mayor? Does city hall need a woman's touch? A recent column by the Toronto Star's Catherine Porter argued that city politics is still very much a man's game. The two "white middle-aged guys" expected to dominate next year's campaign for mayor - George Smitherman and John Tory - kicked off by "growling at one another across a table" on talk radio last week. Women, raised playing with teacups and crayons, are simply "not trained for the boxing match of a mayoral campaign." That will come as a surprise to Barbara Hall and June Rowlands, strong, competent women who wore the mayor's chain of office from 1991 to 1997. It may also surprise Shelley Carroll, the whip-smart budget chief who is considering a run for the job. No one who has watched her spar with critics at city council can doubt her ability in the ring. Councillors Pam McConnell, Janet Davis, Gloria Lindsay Luby and Frances Nunziata aren't exactly pushovers either. Let's not even talk about that veteran pugilist, Mayor Hazel McCallion of Mississauga. It's equally dubious to argue that getting more women into politics would necessarily produce a kinder, gentler city. Just look around the world. Margaret Thatcher's government was hardly a model of consensus-building. Other famous female leaders - Israel's Golda Meir, India's Indira Gandhi, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto - were notoriously combative, sometimes divisive figures. Canada's only female prime minister, Kim Campbell, was a lone wolf who was the farthest thing from the bridge-building conciliator that a woman in power is supposed, in theory, to be. Why then do these myths about women in politics persist? Perhaps it is because the number of women in politics is still so low. Less than a quarter of Toronto city councillors - 10 of 44 - are women. Across the country, about 23 per cent of mayors and councillors are women, just slightly above the 22-per-cent figure for women in the federal Parliament. In their laudable zeal to raise those disappointing figures, promoters of women's participation make sweeping assertions such as: Having more women would take the macho point-scoring out of politics; women have less ego so they make better listeners; women would care more about parks, libraries, daycares and other "soft" services. Those claims come dangerously close to the old stereotypes that used to imprison women, pigeonholing them as gentle enablers who had no place in the rough-and-tumble world of politics. In a just world, women should be elected because of their ability as individuals, not some vague notion about the special virtues of the female sex. If it's wrong to say that men have characteristics that make them superior as political leaders - decisiveness, an analytical brain, a special drive to win - why is it okay to say that women have special qualities that would transform politics? Advocates shouldn't need to make such claims to push for more women in politics. It's a simple matter of equality. There are practical reasons, too. When skilled women fail to enter politics, we lose a vast pool of talent that could make immeasurable contributions to the leadership of the country and, in Toronto's case, the governance of its biggest city. So, by all means, let's elect more women to civic office; but let's do it regardless of their sex, not because of it. Comments by others - 1 - to this web-page at time of posting; Seasoned Warrior 11/21/2009 7:56:30 AM Dr. Shart 11/22/2009 12:25:52 PM you say lets elect more women to public office. then you say we should do it regardless of their sex, not because of it. by that reasoning why should we elect more women? shouldnt we just be electing the better candidate, regardless of sex? Recommend - 3 Disapprove - 3 Thorgasm 11/24/2009 1:39:37 AM DMcDonald 11/24/2009 5:13:09 PM Thorgasm 11/25/2009 8:00:37 AM Rich Grover 11/25/2009 2:44:19 PM women this and women that...now Marcus Gee? Globe = bankrupt in 6 months Rich Grover 11/25/2009 2:45:26 PM Famil Pilot 11/27/2009 11:35:41 AM As for girls being unprepared for political sparring, well, you should have been at my house! When we were kids my brother and my sister would engage in fierce debates in the car and over dinner. Your views were questioned, analyzed, evaluated, and challenged. I also don't necessarily agree that women are going to be all soft. There's some soft guys and girls. There's some hard guys and girls. Is there a particular skew to the curve? Maybe, but it's no reason to make generalizations. And just as a side note, I worked at a summer science camp and we had an all-girls camp. I have never seen children with less cooperative abilities, especially when it came to the engineering challenge. We didn't need to step in at all with our coed groups to settle disputes, but we did with the all-girls. I want to know what an all-boys group would have done! Famil Pilot 11/27/2009 11:36:06 AM As for girls being unprepared for political sparring, well, you should have been at my house! When we were kids my brother and my sister would engage in fierce debates in the car and over dinner. Your views were questioned, analyzed, evaluated, and challenged. I also don't necessarily agree that women are going to be all soft. There's some soft guys and girls. There's some hard guys and girls. Is there a particular skew to the curve? Maybe, but it's no reason to make generalizations. And just as a side note, I worked at a summer science camp and we had an all-girls camp. I have never seen children with less cooperative abilities, especially when it came to the engineering challenge. We didn't need to step in at all with our coed groups to settle disputes, but we did with the all-girls. I want to know what an all-boys group would have done! Famil Pilot 11/27/2009 11:36:49 AM Freedom75 11/27/2009 1:03:56 PM builder.b 11/28/2009 7:52:53 PM Tea Party 12/1/2009 11:40:16 AM http://www.topix.com/forum/ca/halton-hills-on-georgetown keating gun 12/7/2009 7:35:32 AM Home Page - Main Table of Contents - Back up a page - Back to Top [COMMENTS BY DON B. - ] |
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