Understanding the policies & procedures that foster achievement of gender parity in Canadian local governments

Women’s political representation is one of the pillars of democracy and the UN goal towards gender equality. Recently, there have been conducted many studies about gender equity at the federal and provincial levels, but very little at the municipal level. This research project will begin to fill this gap by examining how a few municipal governments in Canada have managed to achieve gender parity. The intern will collect and analyze documents of five municipalities that succeeded in reaching gender parity. Also, the intern will conduct interviews with municipal officials to learn more about their perspectives on this topic. The partner organization, FCM, is looking forward to providing the research findings to their members, Canadian municipalities. FCM expects that practical examples and insights of what policies may be helpful for fostering gender parity will enable more Canadian municipalities to implement them and increase women’s political representation.

Faculty Supervisor:

Jim Farney

Student:

Partner:

Federation of Canadian Municipalities

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Other services (except public administration)

University:

University of Regina

Program: