Yens Pedersen Response: 'Encouraging Women'

Encouraging women
March 23rd, 2009 by Yens

The SNDW posed 2 questions to all the leadership candidates:

1. What steps will you take to ensure that women have greater participation in leadership positions at all levels within the Saskatchewan NDP?
2. What specific actions will you take to ensure the NDP meets its goal of having women make up 50 per cent of candidates in the 2011 election?

My combined response follows: I am committed to 50% of our candidates in the 2011 election being women. I publicly stated my commitment to this target when I declared my candidacy and I continue to state the importance of an inclusive, welcoming and representative party. By continually referring to the importance of the issue, I hope to build member support for choosing more women and minority candidates and leaders. Increasing the number of women who hold leadership positions at all levels of the party increases the visibility and acceptance of women as political leaders, and also increases the pool of women to run as potential candidates.

While campaigning for president, I encouraged a number of women who were also interested in party renewal to run for executive positions. As president, I suggested to a few women (including an aboriginal woman), that they should consider running for leadership positions.

The importance of having people in leadership positions actively encouraging individual women (or for that matter anyone) to run cannot be stressed enough.

I will continue to encourage women to seek leadership positions. I will be supportive and encouraging to parents who bring children to meetings. Children are vital to the continual renewal of our party. The party should provide the option of care for children (or other dependents) at all functions, and I believe that the party should budget an amount every year to ensure there are funds available for this purpose. In doing so, we demonstrate our commitment to establishing universal childcare and supporting families. The Bessie Ellis Fund which provides a small amount of financial assistance for women seeking nominations is a good idea, but needs to be better publicized. Nominations should be advertised well in advance, so that it is not up to a few insiders to find potential candidates and so that more than just a few insiders know of openings. I believe this will result in more qualified candidates, both women and men. I will advocate these actions with the provincial executive.

We also need to elect more women - not just nominate them. If we are to achieve this goal, an obvious place to begin is in our strongest seats. As leader, one of my first actions will be to privately discuss with our MLAs their plans for the next election. If any MLA is overdue for retirement, I will not hesitate to pointedly (but respectfully) encourage him/her to move on. All organizations need to continually renew their leadership.

We should not expect women to have to act like men to become part of the government – instead we should expect that government may change by having more women involved. As leader I will not tolerate disrespectful behaviour in the legislature which diminishes the public’s regard for the institution of government. I do not know if it is a disincentive for women, but regardless, I believe that if we want the public to take politicians seriously and with respect, the politicians must conduct themselves accordingly.