Dr. Fiona MacDonald from our Political Science department recently published a co-authored op-ed about the election:

Going into the election, parties’ candidate slates included a record 582 women running for one of the 338 seats. This tells us women are willing to run despite troubling accounts as to why parties’ and parliament’s highly masculinized , racist and toxic cultures discouraged several MPs from reoffering this time around. Women candidates were vetted by parties’ screening processes, but parties still selected most of them to run in unwinnable seats . Otherwise, the percentage of women candidates, 43 per cent, would more or less match the percentage of actually elected MPs.

"Remember, only 30 per cent of those elected were women. This 13-point deficit reveals that parties’ efforts to reflect Canada’s diversity are more performative than substantive. In other words, parties are keen to demonstrate diversity in order to attract voters but are not committed to making sure that this diversity shows up in the House of Commons."