
Women and Power The Case for Parity
Pascale Navarro. Translator David Homel
September 2016
An LLP Singles essay
It’s already passé to ask if parity is important for today’s Canada. What’s needed now is to ask how we can make sure more women run for office and that they’re well-represented in government. There are no easy answers to this, but it’s clear that half-measures just won’t do.
Pascale Navarro argues that quotas are essential for women to achieve parity with men in politics. Over a hundred other nations worldwide have already established parity as a goal.
What are we waiting for?
Translated by David Homel
Foreword by Sue Montgomery
Congratulations Pascale Navarro! The author of Women and Power: The Case for Parity (LLP 2016) Pascale is winner of a 2016 Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case!
Photo: Louise Savoie
ABOUT AUTHOR PASCALE NAVARRO:
Montreal journalist and columnist Pascale Navarro is a frequent contributor to major newspapers and magazines as well as to radio and television broadcasts. Winner of the Women of Merit prize for Communications in 2007, she is the author of several feminist essays on contemporary social and political issues. In November, 2016, she won the Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case. Women and Power is the first of her books to appear in English.
ABOUT TRANSLATOR DAVID HOMEL:
David Homel is an award-winning novelist and translator of novels. He has won the Governor General's Award twice for translation. He has also worked as a filmmaker, journalist, and teacher. His most recent novel is The Fledglings (Cormorant, 2014).
"Quebec journalist's case for gender parity should be read by all Canadians," by Toula Drimonis, Ricochet, 23 September 2016.
Despite institutionalized sexism and countless seen and unseen factors that come into play to prevent and dissuade women from participating fully in the democratic process, some people, naively or optimistically, feel that things will eventually just fall into place.
If that were the case, suffragettes would still be waiting for the right to vote.
"Gender parity in all fields is a vital step for women to achieve true equality, for democracy to truly be representative of all, and for the world’s largest untapped resource to finally be harnessed for everyone’s gain. I’ve written about the need for gender parity before, in creative fields and in the House of Commons, where progress is slow and sometimes purely symbolic, but still headed in the right direction. It’s a subject that continues to elicit doubt and fear because its political pursuit often raises more questions than it does answers." -- Toula Drimonis.