By Emily Stonehouse

When Jessica Slade approached me about writing some columns for our newspapers leading up to the federal election, I was elated.

Slade brings over a decade of political experience to the table, and was able to offer depth and understanding to all levels of the election.

I had multiple people reach out and say that her insight had helped in some capacity. As a busy mom of two on top of her professional career, Slade also runs the online page Civics with Slade. And as she has articulated in past columns, politics doesn’t end when elections wrap up. If anything, it’s just getting started.

In a recent post, Slade broke down the top candidate names from ridings across the country. “I was curious about name patterns across parties, so I downloaded the full Elections Canada candidate list and crunched the numbers,” she said.

Out of 1900 candidates, the top six were all male-coded names. Michael, David, Chris, John, Paul, and Daniel, in that order. There were no female names in that list. “This isn’t just about the names,” said Slade. “It’s about the continued underrepresentation of women and gender-diverse people in Canadian politics.”

And this got me thinking about representation. Now don’t get me wrong, I would never vote for someone based solely on their gender affiliation. Experience, skills, and overall decorum takes priority during election time.

But why aren’t we seeing more women in Canadian politics? Is the environment unwelcoming? Is it because they are the ones primarily focused on child raising? Maybe it’s because it…shudder…hasn’t really been done before?

It’s not a glass ceiling these women are looking up towards, it’s a pinhole of light, distantly past layers of bricks and mortar purposely put in place by decades of misogyny.

It’s an uphill battle. And sometimes we think we’re making ground. Little by little, chipping away at the imbalance, until we’re knocked down again, back to the bottom of the mountain.

Gender wage gaps, limited access to gender affirming care, questions about our reproductive health and biological clocks somehow shadowing our competency, our worth, our value.

While my family and I watched the televised debates of the federal election, there was a stark absence of women on those stages.

And to me, that’s not something that’s startling. It’s something I’m used to. Yes, I noticed it, but I didn’t really think twice about it.

But my kids did.

“They’re all men?” they said. Yes, they are. All with different ideas, some better than others.

“But, they’re all men?” they reiterated.

Yes. They are.

And again, I give credit to those individuals who truly care about their communities and their country on a national stage; both men and women.

But maybe it’s not even about politics. It’s about representation. About having a seat at the table, about seeing faces that look like ours, about the stories and experiences these women can bring to a conversation that could impact a population.

So when our little girls peer up at that shadowy glass ceiling, they don’t just see a distant pinhole of promise. They see all the faces of women who have walked before them towards that light, and are willing to grab their little hands, and pull them up.