Women account for 44% of candidates in P.E.I. election, up a third from 2019

Prince Edward Island has seen a major jump in the number of women and diverse candidates running in the 2023 election compared to previous years.

Fifty-two of the 119 candidates are women, or 44 per cent.

That's up considerably from past campaigns: 33 per cent of the candidates in the 2019 election were women (35 of 109 candidates) and 29.5 per cent in the 2015 provincial election (31 of 105).

Sweta Daboo, the executive director of the P.E.I. Coalition for Women in Government, said it's important to mark the rise in the number of women offering in the 2023 election. It is just as important, she added, to see more women run equally across the province.

"I would say it's promising that we're seeing parties really start to value gender diversity and make active efforts to include more women," she said.

"When you look at the distribution of women candidates, you find that there are some districts where all four candidates are women, so obviously only one of those is getting elected."

Of the 27 districts on P.E.I., 13 have 50 per cent or more women candidates, with one having all women candidates. Four districts have no women running.

Jillian Kilfoil, executive director of the Women's Network of P.E.I., said having more women running is just the beginning. The next step is seeing greater representation in the legislature once all the votes are counted.

"In political science, there is the notion of critical mass, and so having at least 33 per cent of a group represented is what's needed to ensure the issues get on the political agenda," said Kilfoil.

Democratic reform in general is really important to creating more inclusive representation in politics.— Jillian Kilfoil

She calls the candidate numbers in this campaign "certainly promising, but [we] don't want to get too excited until we have those results in and hopefully we see enough critical mass within the next assembly on P.E.I. to shift some of those items on the political agenda."

Sobia Ali-Faisal, executive director of BIPOC USHR, noted that more Black, Indigenous and people of colour candidates are running than in previous elections, and said this should spark conversations around allowing Islanders with permanent residency to vote.

"A lot of the racialized people on P.E.I. can't vote; only the citizens can vote … A lot of our community is asking for there to be changes around that, for people with permanent resident status to be able to vote as well," Ali-Faisal said.

"Our population will have more of a say that way."

By the numbers

The three emphasized the need to continue seeing more women candidates running across the Island in future elections.

By the numbers for this election, 12 women are running for the NDP — the most of any registered party. Here are the number of women running by affiliation:

• NDP: 12 of 27, or 44 per cent.
• Liberals: 11 of 25, or 44 per cent.
• Greens: 11 of 25, or 44 per cent.
• PCs: 9 of 27, or 33 per cent.
• Island Party: 6 of 11, or 54 per cent.
• Independent: 3 of 4, or 75 per cent.

The fall election factor

The number of women running could have been higher had PC Leader Dennis King stuck to the October fixed election date, all three people interviewed for this article said. 

"We're celebrating an increased diversity of candidates, but there are women who we've been speaking to for months who said: 'If it was October, perhaps that would be doable,'" Daboo said.

We really need to take a close look at why is it that so many women from marginalized populations are not putting their names forward.— Sobia Ali-Faisal

"But [they] ultimately decided not to put their name forward."

Ali-Falsal said she's heard from a lot of women who feel "very intimidated" about getting into politics and that's it's "even moreso from women who come from marginalized populations, racialized women, women with disabilities, trans women.

"We really need to take a close look at why is it that so many women from marginalized populations are not putting their names forward," she said.

For Kilfoil, that underlines the need for electoral reform, and specifically, to switch from the Island's first-past-the-post system to proportional representation.

"Democratic reform in general is really important to creating more inclusive representation in politics," Kilfoil said. 

"All of the political institutions we have now were created at a time when people of colour and women, legally, were not even considered persons."

Diversity in party backrooms a priority

Daboo and the coalition have been at the forefront of that call for years on P.E.I. She said that is an important step in having more women and BIPOC Islanders elected.

What also needs to be done, she added, is to have people who are diverse in the backrooms to build a more inclusive parties.

"When we're looking at diversity, I think it's really great that we're talking about candidates. But it's also very important to look at diversity within the party apparatus," Daboo said.

"One of the reasons why we're not seeing, perhaps, as much diversity in terms of race, or in terms of gender identity and sexual orientation that we could have is that the backrooms themselves need to be more diverse for that to happen."