Our Problem with Women

Since the beginning of parliamentary time in Canada (1867), only 216 women have been elected to the House of Commons; 3,867 men have warmed those same seats. We are currently in the 40th sitting of Parliament, with only 68 of 308 seats occupied by women. Appalling, infuriating, don’t you agree?

Parliamentary time for Canadian women only began in 1922, when plucky Miss Agnes Macphail from Proton Township, Grey County, took her seat in the House of Commons, arriving in Ottawa “wearing a straw hat with veiled brim and a blue serge dress, and [carrying] with her a clutch purse and gloves,” a costume deemed by contemporary accounts to be “severe, worn out, unfashionable, and downright dowdy.”

Oops.

Parliamentary time for Canadian women only began in 1922, when the redoubtable Agnes Macphail from Proton Township, Grey County, began a 20-year stretch as a member of Parliament, followed by a term in the Ontario legislature (introducing legislation for...