Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we have just heard, today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. This year to celebrate the 100 year anniversary, the Status of Women Council of the NWT has gathered women from all over the NWT for their conference called Celebrating Northern Women – A Century of Achievement.
Since 1911, every March 8th women and men throughout the world celebrate progress towards equality for women and their full participation. They reflect on the challenges and barriers that remain and consider future steps to achieving equality for all women in all aspects of their lives.
The North is now, and always has been, full of strong women, Mr. Speaker, women who have made huge contributions to the development and advancement of our Territory. But in the area of elected office, equal representation for women is sadly lacking. Women are almost 50 percent of the NWT general population, but there have never been more than three female MLAs in any Legislative Assembly. In this Legislature, only 14 percent of Cabinet is female, only 16 percent of the MLAs are female and that is the highest it has ever been. An acknowledged goal for women’s groups is to achieve 30 percent female elected Members and the NWT is a long way from that.
Over the years, since women gained the right to vote -- and that was 1920 -- the number of women candidates in elections has gradually increased, but the number of women elected has not. As NWT residents, we have an election opportunity looming this fall, an opportunity to increase the representation of women in our Legislative Assembly. In the last election, less than half the ridings had a female candidate. Of the 40 candidates in total, only 20 percent were female. NWT residents need to start now to encourage more women to run for the office of MLA and then to provide support to those women candidates, financially, morally, emotionally, any and all kinds of support, Mr. Speaker. To my male colleagues, I put out this challenge: find a female candidate to run against you, or if you are not running, find one you will support prior to and on October 3rd.
Our Legislature should be representative of its people, Mr. Speaker. We will not achieve that until at least half of our MLAs are female. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
