With municipal and provincial elections this year, grassroots political organization PoliticsNOW is encouraging women in the north to be "running for something."
Running for Something is also the name of an event the group is hosting on March 21, featuring female politicians from Northern Ontario: Sudbury MP Viviane Lapointe, Timmins Coun. Kristin Murray, and East Ferris Coun. and the NDP candidate for Nipissing Erika Lougheed.
The trio will take part in a round-table discussion detailing the experiences of what it’s like to be a woman in politics in the North.
PoliticsNOW works towards empowering and encouraging women to run for municipal office in Northern Ontario by offering support to female candidates. Its founder, Amanda Kingsley Malo, created the organization in 2017 when she noticed the disparity between the number of women entering municipal politics compared to men in Northern Ontario cities.
“When we look at city council, they had only 21 per cent of city council's seats held by women in Northern Ontario,” Kingsley Malo told Sudbury.com over a phone interview. “So if you're looking at cities like Greater Sudbury, and [North] Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, North Bay to qualify them – there's also Kenora, Elliot Lake, Timiskaming and Dryden. There are 85 available council seats. And only 18 of those seats have been held by women since the 2018 election. And that has held true since we began in 2017.”
The purpose of PoliticsNOW is to see change in the dynamic between women and men who run for council. PoliticsNOW wants to see more women take up the challenge and equip them with the necessary skills to be successful.
“And so we would like to see that number go up by having more women running because it's proven that when women run, they win in equal percentages as men do. But less women decide to run,” Kingsley Malo said. “So any woman who even has that wild dream of being able to present themselves to be a city councillor or a school board trustee or a municipal councillor for their town, we help train them.
“We give them all of the resources that they need, any of the tools that they need. We help connect them with other female candidates, with a network. We help build community, we set them up with volunteers that we can, and then we support them as the writ drops, and they start running for office.”
The upcoming event on March 21 is just one of the tools viewers can use to fulfill their political ambitions. The event will be held virtually at 8 p.m. in a round-table discussion format, followed by a Q&A session.
“With perspectives on what it’s like to run for different parties and at all different levels of government, the conversation that we will have promises to be honest and interesting,” Kingsley Malo wrote in a press release.
“I hope that [those who attend the event can] leave this event inspired. To be able to use their voice for change, to know that they can stand in their power, to know what their worth is, and to know that that work is important to our community. And to know that there are multiple pathways to becoming a politician. That while these are just three of those stories, that they can feel empowered to take their story, and begin sharing that with a community as well.”
To find out more or to RSVP for the event, visit the website here.
Eden Suh is a new media reporter at Sudbury.com.
