Canada can achieve gender parity in politics: here’s how

How to advance equal representation for women in Parliament

Canada is a leader in supporting women’s equality around the world, but at home we are falling behind when it comes to electing women.

• Women won only 30 per cent of Parliamentary seats in the April 2025 election.
• Canada places 72 out of 181 countries on this metric – down from 57th five years ago.
• More than 100 countries have statutory gender quotas, making us an outlier, and our democratic peers, like France, Spain and Belgium, all require gender parity among candidates.

Why gender parity matters

• Representation is fundamental to democracy, and recent research shows that voters view decision-making bodies with gender parity as more democratic, more legitimate and more trustworthy and fair than all-male bodies.
• 86 per cent of Canadians polled said equal representation of men and women in politics is important because it strengthens our economy, improves decision-making and better reflects Canadian values.
• Continuing to accept men’s over-representation reinforces perceptions that women do not belong in politics and are incapable of wielding power.
• Not having gender parity signals to other countries that Canada is not meaningfully committed to gender equality.
  

Research conducted by international expert Dr. Jennifer Piscopo, a widely cited professor of gender and politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, examined the approaches other countries adopted to achieve or approach gender parity. Her findings are reflected below:

Pipeline theory for gender parity debunked

The pipeline theory that gender parity in politics would occur once women caught up to men in education and experience in politics-adjacent fields like law and business is simply not true:

• Canadian women have outnumbered men as law school graduates since the 1990s and currently outnumber men as both law and business graduates. However, their numbers in Parliament have not increased in comparable fashion.
• Women won the same proportion of seats in 2025 as they did in the 2021 federal election.
• Women still face gender discrimination within political parties in terms of how decisions are made, who is given opportunities, and what supports are provided.

Systemic approaches have proven more effective

The number of women in legislative bodies only meaningfully increases when gender parity rules are adopted that apply to all political parties.

Most countries electing more than 40 per cent women use a statutory gender quota that applies to the number of women candidates parties run.

An analysis of the five democracies with national electoral systems most comparable to Canada’s (single-member districts with first-past-the-post rules) demonstrated that the criteria and enforcement mechanisms employed make a measurable difference to their impact. 

The research finds that approaches taken in Nepal, South Korea and Uzbekistan rely on weak requirements and have been largely ineffective; France has achieved mixed results. However, Mexico, where women now make up 50.2% of federal representatives, has a very effective statutory candidate gender quota with features that Canada could effectively adapt as outlined below.

An effective Canadian-designed system would:

✔ Mandate gender parity among parties’ candidates across all ridings;
✔ Use obligatory language (“parties must”) rather than (“parties should”);
✔ Require parties to practice gender parity across competitive ridings, including both winning and swing ridings
✔ Impose meaningful enforcement mechanisms such that parties failing to follow the rules would have an opportunity to correct their candidate registries, but if they do not do so within a stipulated window, they would be prevented from fielding candidates in the election.

Canada needs to act on these insights and implement systemic change measures in line with democracies around the world to:

✔ Demonstrate its genuine commitment to advancing gender equality;
✔ Ensure that policy-decision making benefits from women’s insights; and
✔ Increase public trust in government.

Read Jennifer Piscopo’s full report here

Informed Perspectives is a registered charity working to bridge the gender gap in Canadian public discourse. Conversations happening in the news media and political spheres have the power to influence everything else, and the chronic under-representation of women’s voices hampers our ability to advance in every arena.

• Monitor media representation and drive accountability through our Gender Gap Tracker
• Elevate women’s voices through workshops that transform knowledge into influence
• Connect 1,500 journalists with diverse qualified sources through our expert database
• Commission research into equality measures that can inform systemic change solutions.