Centre for International Governance Innovation by Victoria Scharr and Georgina Wainwright-Kemdirim 26 August 2025
There is a clear and growing consensus that Canada has been too complacent and reliant on the United States.
Read more via Centre for International Governance Innovation
“What are you doing, and how can I help you?”
That’s what Shari Graydon asked the executive director of Equal Voice back in 2019. She had just learned from our ground-breaking Gender Gap Tracker research that politicians made up a whopping 60% of the men and women most frequently quoted by Canada’s most influential news media.
The discovery made her realize that Informed Perspectives (formerly Informed Opinions) couldn’t achieve our mandate – to bridge the gender gap in media – until Equal Voice realized its goal of ensuring women held as many seats as men.
For over more than two decades, organizations like Equal Voice have done vital work encouraging more women to run, hosting campaign schools and raising awareness.
These efforts may have moved individuals, but they failed to move the system itself: men still occupy 69.5% of the seats, and Canada’s global ranking for the representation of women in politics has dropped from a respectable 26th to a shameful 70th.
This is a problem, because like the media, politics have the power to influence everything else.
And it’s why we’ve been investing heavily in research, public engagement and advocacy aimed at making systemic change.
Instead of preparing women to fit an electoral machine that was built to keep them out, we’re exploring proven remedies that will ensure they hold the balance of power within.
Over the past four years, we have:
1) Reviewed the different paths to parity other countries have taken and created an accessible summary to make clear what the broad options include;
2) Collaborated with scholars and advocates to write, publish and disseminate thought leadership on related issues in dozens of publications across Canada;
3) Commissioned polling research documenting Canadians’ overwhelming support for seeing women hold a balance of power and publicized it through hundreds of news stories;
4) Met with dozens of MPs and policy makers about our research, the actions Canada could take, and the democratic and economic benefits we could realize;
5) Created an online tool that makes it easy for residents to send an email to their elected representatives at all three levels of government, requesting action.
Our efforts are gaining traction.
Earlier this fall in Ottawa, we met with senior officials to talk about how to advance the issue. I’m delighted to report that we’re seeing an openness to this conversation that didn’t exist a few years ago.
We need to seize the moment – but we can’t do it alone!
We’re collaborating with international experts to create a tailored brief that maps out the most impactful means of achieving progress within Canada’s first-past-the-post single-member system. And we’re reminding politicians why acting now is not just in our best interests, but in theirs, too.
Your support for this work has been – and will continue to be – invaluable. And when we ultimately realize our collective ambition to “Balance the Power” we look forward to declaring in celebration:
“Look what we made happen together!
(Ottawa) – September 22nd, 2025 –Informed Perspectives reveals that Canada’s status as a global champion of gender equality is under serious threat.
In just 25 years, the country has plummeted from 28th to 71st place in world rankings for women’s representation. This significant decline highlights the inadequacy of our current approach to achieving parity in Canadian politics. This backslide has occurred despite overwhelming support for change. New polling from Abacus Data reveals that gender parity is a core belief for most Canadians, with 86% saying it’s important to have equal representation of men and women in politics at all levels of government.
Democracy Deficit “Equal representation is fundamentally about democracy and trust,” said Shari Graydon, Catalyst at Informed Perspectives. “Canadians overwhelmingly expect that women should hold the balance of power in politics at all levels, and Canada cannot claim to be a global leader on equality while men dominate at 70% in our highest decision-making body.”
The consequences extend far beyond representation numbers. A significant majority of Canadians understand that gender parity delivers tangible benefits to Canadian democracy, with roughly four in five people saying that ensuring a balance of power among elected representatives leads to:
Global Representation Standard
While Canada’s ranking has continued to slip, countries around the world have explicitly acted to address equality. More than 100 nations have implemented concrete steps to increase gender parity by setting minimum representation targets and requiring political parties to meet them. These countries recognize that meaningful representation requires decisive action, not wishful thinking. They also understand that such gains feed increased trust in electoral outcomes.
Strategies Canada Must Adopt
Inclusive candidate recruitment and nomination processes can make a big difference in ensuring that women and gender-diverse people have a seat at the decision-making table.
Countries that have been successful in ensuring meaningful representation have implemented different strategies, including electoral reform, a parity law, constitutional reform and mandatory quotas. “Canada has an opportunity to lead the world by strengthening women’s political representation. By working together across all levels of governments, institutions, and communities we can ensure women and gender diverse people are equal partners in shaping Canada’s future,” said Chi Nguyen, Member of Parliament for Spadina–Harbourfront.
“Government must lead by example if we want true gender parity in Canada. When public institutions reflect the diversity of our country, they set a powerful standard for businesses to follow – and unlock the full economic potential of a workforce where everyone can contribute and thrive,” said Julie Savard-Shaw, Executive Director, The Prosperity Project.
The choice facing Canada’s political leadership is clear: implement proven strategies that have been successful internationally or watch Canada’s global standing continue to drop.
To learn more about Informed Perspectives: visit our advocacy page
Data sources: Women in National Parliaments, IPU: Parline Global Data
Media Contact:
Annette Goerner
Managing Director, Public Relations
spark*advocacy
annette@sparkadvocacy.ca
613-818-6941
For 15 years, we’ve been working to enhance and transform who shapes Canada’s public discourse. In this next chapter of our journey, Informed Opinions is becoming Informed Perspectives.
When Shari Graydon launched Informed Opinions in 2010 as a project of MediaWatch, the goal was clear: equip women with relevant skills and incentives to contribute their insights and ideas to public conversations through news media, where they remained dramatically underrepresented. We began by training experts to write compelling commentary and say “yes” to media interviews.
Since then, our mission has expanded significantly. We’ve built Canada’s first database of diverse expert sources, created the Gender Gap Tracker with Simon Fraser University, tackled online hate with research and resources, and advocated for systemic change across media and politics.
Our new name — Informed Perspectives/Perspectives plurielles — better reflects this evolution and our vision for the future, and more clearly establishes our national and bilingual identity.
You’ll notice a fresh visual identity that reflects our bold advocacy orientation and inclusive approach. Our new logo symbolizes our commitment to amplifying diverse voices, with a modern design that builds on our legacy while looking toward the future.
The road ahead
Despite 16 years of progress, women’s voices still make up less than 30% of those quoted in Canadian media — reflecting only a 7% increase in the past quarter century. Gender-diverse voices and those with intersectional identities remain even more marginalized.
As Informed Perspectives, we’re setting ambitious goals:
Join us on this journey
Whether you’ve been with us from the beginning or are just discovering our work, there’s a place for you in this next chapter:
Together, we’re building a Canada where diverse voices shape every important decision. Because when everyone’s perspective matters, we all benefit.
