Kate Graham: Addressing the barriers to women in local government
Political scientist Kate Graham has focused a lot of her energies the past year on chronicling the challenges faced by women in leadership roles across Canada.
However, she hopes the lessons in that journey can help push for change in all orders of government.
SheAO Symposium Experience
Prior to the 2019 Ontario Municipal Administrators’ Association Fall Workshop, Graham joined some two-dozen other women to discuss the unique challenges women face in the municipal workplace at the first SheAO Symposium. Later in the day, Graham shared some of her insights from that event with Municipal World CEO Susan Gardner.
“I do feel there was magic in the room and definitely a shared understanding that if we want to see more women in leadership roles in local government, it is something worth talking about. It is something worth thinking about how we can advance that cause,” she said. “Today there was an amazing group of women gathered together to talk about exactly that.”
Lessons from No Second Chances
In the video, Graham discusses insights she gained during her participation in the Canada 2020 project called No Second Chances.
When examining the political careers of those women, who Graham interviewed over the course of the project, she said, “some really strong and I think very concerning patterns” are revealed. Graham said the project “illuminated” a number of problems known to be true in all sectors, including local government.
Moving Forward Together
While the work continues to find greater equity in leadership roles across Canada, Graham said the insights at SheAO revealed that sexism is often thought of as being a problem of men. As the discussion revealed, it isn’t.
“Men and women can both be champions of seeing the representation of women in leadership roles,” Graham said. “Both men and women can champion the continued empowerment of women and we need that to happen. It’s not men versus women, it’s us together. MW
✯ Municipal World Insider and Executive Members: You might also be interested in Sean Meyer’s article: SheAO Symposium spotlights women’s municipal sector challenges. Note that you can now access the complete collection of past articles (and more) from your membership dashboard.
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