Simcoe North MPP Jill Dunlop is hoping recent meetings will help empower women and bring the barriers they face to the attention of top decision makers.
Around the time of International Women’s Day earlier this month, Dunlop began holding virtual meetings with women in various sectors, including forestry and farming. Appropriate provincial ministers also took part.
“I hear from women in all different sectors all the time and I thought it was important for ministers to hear from them,” said Dunlop, who is associate minister of children and women’s issues. “It wasn’t just barriers. It was also about success.”
One of the meetings focused on municipal politics and included female mayors and deputy mayors, including her mother, Jane, who is deputy mayor of Severn Township. Steve Clark, minister of municipal affairs and housing, joined in to hear from participants.
“It’s crucial to ensuring we have vibrant, diverse representation,” Dunlop said of bringing attention to the issue. “Increasing the number of women in politics is something I’ve been really interested in.”
Through conversations with female politicians at various levels of government, Dunlop said she has heard there is a need for mentorship.
She also feels a stronger focus on politics in school curricula for younger students would be beneficial. While not every student will want to become a politician, she said it could still be helpful to those who end up working in or with politics in different ways.
“Then, they might feel that becoming a politician is something that they want to do,” she said.
Men are “more likely to jump at the opportunity to further their career” because they are often more confident about that possibility, Dunlop said.
“We need to build up that confidence (in women and girls),” she said. “When you plant that seed, they start to think, ‘Why not me? I can do this.’”
When it comes to municipal politics, a lot of women feel “it’s an old boys’ club,” Dunlop said. That’s unfortunate, she added, because there are many women who show leadership in their municipalities through entrepreneurship and non-profit roles.
“These are women that would be fantastic on council,” she said.
Pat Hehn would also like to see more women run for municipal election. She is the only woman on Orillia city council.
“Women need to feel like this is a job that they can do,” she said.
She met with former premier Kathleen Wynne a couple of years ago and the two talked about what was preventing women from running for elected office. Hehn said Wynne told her men will often feel immediately confident when approached with the idea of running for election, while women tend to take more convincing that they’re capable of doing the job.
“We haven’t been brought up to know that we can be just as good a decision maker as a man can be, so we back off,” Hehn said. “I would really like to see more women run. It’s not easy work, but it’s very rewarding work, and it makes a really big difference to have women involved because we have a different point of view and we bring a balance.”
Traditionally, she said, women have been stay-at-home mothers or primary caregivers, which “might hold them back a bit.”
But, times are changing.
When Hehn was a young mother, she and all of her fellow maternal mates were stay-at-home moms.
“Right now, even though I’m older, I can’t think of many friends who are stay-at-home moms,” she said.
Hehn hopes to see more support in place to encourage and empower women in politics.
Dunlop said she would take the information she has gleaned through her recent meetings back to her team to look at potential programs, including mentorship opportunities.
“It’s our duty to be there and available to work with the next generation as well,” she said.
