Published 2000-07-01 by Derek Paul in Global issues | Governance

Democratic governance: the need for equal representation of women

In E. Diener and D. R. Rahtz (eds.), Advances in Quality of Life Theory and Research, 243-260 (c) 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain.

ABSTRACT

Failure of traditional parliamentary government to make laws respecting the real interests of the majority of voters at large, especially female voters, and the constant difficulty of achieving or maintaining adequate female representation in parliaments, demonstrate the need for new concepts in electoral structures, as well as in the style of parliaments and governing bodies. A new model would have to satisfy through the electoral system and through parliament the needs of the female population. A dual-list electoral system in which one list would have only women candidates, and the other only men, would go a long way toward extricating women from their present virtual unenfranchisement, and would thus lead to a global improvement in the quality of life. Such a system could be introduced whether or not the electoral system is one of proportional representation. Changes in the parliamentary system itself might best be considered after parliaments have achieved equal representation from men and women.

INTRODUCTION

When an idea starts popping up independently with sufficient frequency, it may be that its time has come. Equal representation of women is said to have been proposed by Bernard Shawl. In more recent times a convincing case for it was put forward by Canadian lawyer Christine Boyle2. In 1991, Jack Harris, Member of the House of Assembly of Newfoundland, introduced a private member's Bill calling for parity between men and women in the Newfoundland legislature, to be achieved by combining electoral districts in pairs and having two members elected from each, one from a list of women candidates, and the other from a list of men3. A month later a "very similar proposal" was put to the British House of Commons by Conservative M.P. Teresa Gorman4. In December 1996, the Nunavut Implementation Commission in Iqaluit, Canada, independently put the same proposal forward for the new legislature being planned for that regionl,5. My own first thoughts on equal representation were written down in mid 1996, before I had heard of any of the foregoing. More recently, France's new Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, in outlining his government's program, said that France should enshrine the goal of political parity between men and women in the constitution6. Significantly, the French lower House doubled its number of female members at the last election, while the British House of Commons, with a Labour majority, doubled its number of women. In Bangladesh, to encourage women into politics, a temporary constitutional amendment allows the House of 300 members to appoint/elect 30 women. In India a bill aimed at guaranteeing 33 per cent of the seats of the House to women is being revised prior to resubmission for further debate.

All countries unlisted in table 1 have fewer than 10 per cent of women in their lower Houses. The bare numbers in this table conceal political tendencies in some countries. For example, the parties of the ruling coalition in Germany (SPD-CDU) have 33.7 and 14.3 percent female representation in the Bundestag, while the FDP has 17 percent, the PDS has 43.3 percent and the Green Party has 59 percent. In Canada, the only socialist party (NDP) has 38 percent female representation in the House of Commons, more than twice the average. In Britain, the increase in women members following the 1997 election came about as a result of the increase in the Labour Party representation from 271 seats to 419, with the Labour women's percentage going from 14 per cent to 24 per cent. The fraction of women's seats for all the other parties combined went from 6 per cent to 8 per cent.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SEXES

There will inevitably be resistance to the idea that political parity should be "enshrined in the constitution," wherever people try to enshrine it. To begin with, many men would lose their parliamentary seats unless the total number were increased. There will be resistance against changing the status quo. There will be arguments put forward along the lines that seats should go to those that merit them and that voters are already doing an adequate job of judging merit by the way they cast their votes. Strongest among the resisters will be those who object to the idea of equity because they see clearly that in parliament it would challenge the male-dominator system that has ruled human societies for over 4000 years. These last resisters are likely to be the toughest opponents of equity because they and their ilk have "had it so good" for so long except, of course when they themselves were victimized by war and when they were at the receiving end of torture and oppression - which happened often enough. We may have to remind them that life wasn't always perfect throughout those 4000 years.

This paper argues that there have always been both a male principle and a female principle operating in human society but that, when the former dominates and suppresses the latter, an imbalance develops which puts stresses upon society itself and the planetary ecosystem.

Table 1.	Partial list of women's representation in National lower or sole Houses, 1977.
Order	Country	% in the	Order	Country	% in the
		lower House			lower House
1	Sweden	40.4	36	Czech Republic	15.0
2	Norway	39.4	37=	Slovakia	14.7
3	Finland	33.5	37=	Zimbabwe	14.7
4	Denmark	33.0	39	Mexico	14.2
5	Netherlands	31.3	40	Ireland	13.9
6	New Zealand	29.2	41	Kazakstan	13.4
7	Seychelles	27.3	42=	Bulgaria	13.3
8	Austria	26.8	42=	St. Kitts & Nevis	13.3
9	Germany	26.2	44=	Poland	13.0
10	Iceland	25.4	44=	Portugal	13.0
11	Argentina	25.3	46	Estonia	12.9
12	Mozambique	25.2	47	Indonesia	12.6
13	South Africa	25.0	48	Guatemala	12.5
14	Spain	24.6	49	Cameroun	12.2
15	Cuba	22.8	50	Albania	12.1
16=	China	21.0	51=	Azerbaijan	12.0
16=	Eritrea	21.0	51=	Belgium	12.0
16=	Switzerland	21.0	53=	Columbia	11.7
19	DPR of Korea	20.1	53=	Dominican Republic	11.7
20=	Grenada	20.0	53=	Jamaica	11.7
20=	Guyana	20.0	53=	San Marino	11.7
20=	Luxembourg	20.0	53=	Senegal	11.7
23	Viet Nam	18.5	53=	United States of America 11.7
24	Britain	18.2	59	Hungary	11.4
25=	Namibia	18.1	60=	Cape Verde	11.1
25=	Uganda	18.1	60=	Italy	11.1
27=	Canada	18.0	60=	Trinidad & Tobago	11.1
27=	Turkmenistan	18.0	63=	Nicaragua	10.8
29=	Lithuania	17.5	63=	Peru	10.8
29=	UR of Tanzania 17.5	63=	Philippines	10.8
31	Chad	17.3	66=	Barbados	10.7
32	Rwanda	17.1	66=	EI Salvador	10.7
33	Costa Rica	15.8	68	Russian Federation	10.2
34	Suriname	15.7	69	Guinea-Bissau	10.0
35	Australia	15.5

If the male principle as we now find it embodies dominance, that is, dominance of one person over another, of one over many, and of man over Nature, then the female principle embodies nurture of others, not merely other people, but of everything living. A deeper look at the female principle reveals that it is also associated with diversity and sharing7. In the animal world the role of male dominance is obvious: it has to do with ensuring that females are impregated by the fittest available male and is thus closely linked with species survival. It has nothing to do with domination of the females of the species. The female role is equally obvious, having to do with nurturing and protecting the young. In many species, partnership can be observed, as when birds cooperate in raising their young.

With the human race, the male principle seems to have developed far beyond its purely sexual significance to the point where it became an obsession with dominance of everything. What preceded this obsession? Clear evidence of a major civilization not subject to the male-dominant mode has been gradually uncovered in recent decades. We find a vivid account of very ancient, Goddess-worshipping societies in the explorations of Merlin Stone8, who is at pains to show how the male-dominator model in the middle east, Anatolia and in Egypt did not take hold all at once, but rather its onset was gradual. The more recent writings of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas9 tell us that there was an essentially peaceful society in Old Europe from 6500 BC or even earlier. This civilization was transformed through a series of Indo-European invasions beginning about 4300 Be. By 2800 BC only a few pockets of the Old European civilization remained, most notably the Minoan civilization of Crete that lasted until about 1500 BC. Riane EislerlO has reviewed Gimbutas' many findings as well as those of Merlin Stone and other researchers and writers; she includes an account of those who accept Gimbutas' interpretation of the archaeological finds as well as those who are still unconvinced (all of the latter are males). Eisler contends, following Gimbutas, from the lack of evidence of the tools of war and from other archaeological evidence, that Old Europe and the Minoan civilization of Crete operated on a partnership model, that is, a partnership between the sexes. Whether the society of Old Europe operated upon a partnership model in the most modern sense or was matriarchal, and thus essentially female dominated, may never be proven beyond all doubt, but the partnership model is important in what follows, and if it is an essentially new concept, not derivable from Old Europe, it has full validity nevertheless. The onset of the male-dominator mode, which gradually took over human society, can now be dated at about 4300 B.e. and represented important change over all the above-mentioned regions.

The value of Eisler's work goes far beyond popularising the latest archaeology, as she traces the evidence for the male-dominator mode from the prehistoric Kurgan invasions to the earliest historic times and then on to the present day. A central feature of the religion of Old Europe, as elsewhere, was worship of the Goddessll. The female figure which most often represents the Goddess stands for creation and is symbolic of a life-giving force12. It is said to embrace both the male and female principles9 since both are necessary for the continuance of life, and thus embodies the essence of partnership, that is, a partnership between male and female. A partnership society will not exist without conflict, but it may exist without war. The advent of male-dominator societies is easily recognized in archaeology. Male gods appear on the scene, especially gods of war, and weapons abound; the chief deity becomes a male character leaving the Goddess - later, goddesses - in

subservience13. Finally She is eliminated brutally in the principal forms of monotheism that have survived. As one enters historic times the nature of the male-dominator structure becomes more visible. One finds that the hierarchy is entirely male except when, as sometimes happened, a female monarch ascended the throne. Cleopatra is one example and Alexandra Salome, who was queen of the Hebrews from 79 B.C. until her death in 69 B.C., is another from the same epoch. Whether or not these exceptional women tried to function within it, neither reigned long enough to reverse a four-thousand year trend. However, Alexandra Salome was so good at peacemaking and conflict resolution that she became known as the "Peace of Zion."

A general characteristic of the male-dominator model that pervades history is the systematic suppression of women. This is not something that can be ascribed to Nature herself, and must thus be regarded as some kind of aberration of the human race. It is found in the Hebrew tradition from Biblical times. It became systematic in the Christian Church from about 200 ADl4, with much intermittent and often cruel suppression since then. Islamic societies have all the characteristics of the male-dominator variety, though"... the Koran, Islam's holy scripture, does not brand women as unequal or inferior."15 There are many aspects of the suppression of women in Hindu society; and Chinese society is strongly male-dominant - one particular form of suppression of women in China is the lower level of welcome accorded to girl babies in so many families and, now that the sex of foetuses can be determined, the selective abortion of the female foetus. Thus the suppression continues to this day, different in different parts of the world, and it takes the forms of killing, violence, rape, pornography, confinement, torture, mutilation, and simply setting women's interests asidel6.

Two of Eisler's most important points are that 1) the basic motive for the systematic suppression of women, under whatever religious tenets it occurs, is in reality the maintenance of the male-dominator hierarchy; and 2) that continuance of the male-dominator mode of running human society will lead to its destruction. I add that such destruction may occur sooner rather than later, because we possess the means to do it and we (the western nations and Israel) have learned how to foster fanaticism in others; it is fanaticism that will push the fatal button rather than turn off the key17.

Many educated and wise women share Eisler's view (point 2), above). For example, the prominent Canadian editor, author and feminist Doris Anderson has done so through her own extensive experience, quite different from Eisler's18.

The foregoing should be more than reason enough to change the way we do things! We cannot, however, change overnight from a social structure based upon male domination and its love affair with militarism. The system is too ingrained. But fortunately the various enlightenments of the past 500 years, such as the Renaissance, the advent of modern science, the ''Age of Reason," the achievement of widespread literacy, the rise of feminism, and scholarship generally in the twentieth century, give us some hope, some straws to clutch at. Then there is the innate sense of justice that we are born with which, alas, is so often badly modified through our conditioning and through rationalizaton.

The progress that has been made implies that most of human civilization is living in the mixed context of both male-dominator and partnership models simultaneously, as evidenced by progress toward equality in many jurisdictions, and as is clearly visible at the family and local levels in many countries. A little evidence of such progress may be found in the rapid growth in number of business partnerships in the USA that have been created by husband-wife teams19. Throughout society we are also witnessing the growth of important nongovernment organizations (NGOs) that have acted as a counterbalance to the male-dominant elite. There are many organizations devoted to environmental protection outside of government today. Many of these NGOs operate in a partnership mode, and often women are prominent within them. Lastly let us not forget the obvious progress that emerged in the twentieth century, the rights acquired by women to enter the professions, universal suffrage, the modest growth in the numbers of women in parliaments; all of these are twentieth century successes.

Notwithstanding this progress, the male-dominator mentality is strongly evident in the highest corridors of power of financial institutions20,21, government22 and corporations23, and it is very obvious in the structure of the Catholic Church, and in such international organizations as NAT024. I maintain also that only the male-dominator mentality could have invented the social montrosity of structural adjustment imposed upon so many people to the detriment of their way of life by an unjust monetary and fiscal system20. Overall, in the areas which most strongly determine what the world order will be tomorrow, the male-dominator mode still prevails. The Security Council of the United Nations also operates in that mode, even though the United Nations Secretariat and agencies are moving toward partnership25.

While society has in some ways advanced, it has much more ahead of it to cope with than ever before: the immensely increased complexity of life; the new, unsolved problems of chronic unemployment resulting from the technological revolution in agriculture and forestry, from automation generally, and from the recent trends in industry, monetary policies, debt, harmful restructuring policies, and unfair international trade; and last but not least the deteriorating environment, climate change, vast increases in population and in poverty, worldwide. A new, civilizing force is needed to deal with all these problems, and to counteract aggressive, military thinking.

The balance that should come from the influence of women in regional, national, and international affairs is unlikely to be achieved if councils and parliaments continue to be dominated by men or follow a dominator model now so ingrained in our consciousness. In these matters the creatively counteractive role of women is essential, because there appears to be no other adequate social counterforce that could be developed26.

Lastly, the voice of women must be heard in full and bear its full influence at the highest levels because, without this, women's own issues will never be properly addressed27, and because it is just that they should be heard. And we cannot have world peace without justice.

FAILING PARLIAMENTS

With the membership of the United Nations standing at 185, a study of the functioning of all those parliaments would go far beyond the capabilities of this short paper. The remarks below thus apply mainly to those few in the English-speaking world with which I have the most familiarity. The early British parliaments have been described as a mechanism whereby the monarch enabled his will to be imparted to the people - through selected representatives. Government was thus not in the least democratic, though parliament did provide some contact between monarch and people. In 1649 the British monarchy was deposed. Later, when a constitutional monarchy was introduced, party politics rapidly developed, and the real power came to lie in the hands of a few party leaders. And so it has remained ever since. Today, Party leaders, typically representing less than 45 percent of the popular vote cast - and not everyone casts a vote - can exert their will on party rank and file, to vote the way the leaders wish. If this were all we would be lucky. However, under the parliamentary system as it operates in Canada and other countries using the single-member electoral system (see below) the leaders do not even appear to be obligated to carry out the mandate that got them elected.

The list of failures of ancient and of modern parliaments may be seen partially as a measure of the immaturity of democracy. Unfortunately, proposals to remedy such situations by constitutional change are likely to be rejected or defeated by the same forces that don't want parliamentary systems to succeed democratically under their present constitutions. Canada can serve as my example. Here, democracy could in principle succeed at the federal level whereas, in practice, a small elected elite can project the power of major financial and commercial interests into the position of national control. It matters not whether the elite is influenced by such forces or agrees a priori with them; the most powerful of financial and business lobbies make sure that the next elected group will be likeminded or equally easily influenced.

So why, therefore, propose constitutional change, if sufficiently powerful forces can corrupt almost any system, in the sense of making it bend to their will? Proposals for constitutional reform, throughout my lifetime, have mostly seemed trivial in terms of the profound changes that are really needed. To implement real change, it may be necessary to wait for a breakdown of the system as it is. We have seen such breakdowns in recent years, especially following the failure of the Soviet empire. Unhappily, many conspicuous examples of major change from these experiences have been civil wars, economic chaos and a substantial measure of disintegration of society.

This article therefore does not look optimistically toward the adoption of any significant improvement over the status quo in the near term. But it repeats Christine Boyle's point2 that women form the single largest identifiable underrepresented group in society. By removing that injustice, further progress in the development of democracy is likely to follow, and it can be done simply, though perhaps not easily, by changing the electoral system.

ELECTORAL SYSTEMS

The Introduction to the sexes, above, should serve as a political philosophy for setting up a new electoral system, which might be followed in time with a new parliamentary system, by which I mean that parliament and government might soon learn to function in new ways.

Lisa Young28 wrote an admirable analysis of electoral systems as they were a few years ago in the western world, examining the characteristics that benefit representation of women. While the present paper was not intended to be a retrospective of parliamentary systems, it is important to know what systems there are out there and how women fare under them. Young distinguishes the following categories of electoral system:

A single member,

A multimember,

A proportional representation.

A single-member system is one in which the winner of the contest in any electoral district (or riding) takes the one available seat, and those who voted for the other candidates get no representation from that district. Currently the electoral districts are geographical, though they need not be in principle. She further distinguishes between single-member systems in which the winner need only have a simple majority over the other candidates, and those in which the winner must end up with more than half the votes29. Britain, Canada, for the House of Commons, and the USA, for the House of Representatives, use the single-member system with the simple majority option. For the Lower Houses of France and Australia the single-member system is used, but the candidate must win an absolute majority of the votes to obtain a seat. The ways in which the French and Australians achieve this differ, yielding two subsets of the single-member absolute-majority subsystem 30.

In multimember subsystems, electoral ridings are made large enough that two or more candidates are elected from each riding, or district. Thus, the talent presenting itself for election is, so to speak, pooled over what would otherwise be two or more separate ridings. In a district with n seats, the voter may cast n votes and is free to distribute these at will between political parties, or to cast them all for the same party. Such systems are used, for example, in Britain and Canada at the municipal level, and in the USA at local and state levels. In Canada, at least, the political affiliations tend to play only a minor role in many municipal elections.

"Proportional representation (PR) systems are designed to reflect the electorate's party preferences in the composition of the legislature"31.

Such systems fall into two categories: list systems and single-transfervote (STV) systems.

A list system is one in which the political parties list their candidates in their order of preference. For each political party the fraction of the list elected reflects as accurately as possible the overall proportion of the votes cast in all districts for that party. This means that the voter is voting for a party, not an individual, though there are modified list systems in which a vote given to a person rather than a party can alter that candidate's position on the party list. Some important modifications of list systems are discussed by Young32.

Germany, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden are examples of countries using list systems, though Germany uses a compound system, a blend of PR-list and single-member. To obtain any seat whatever in the legislature, apolitical party must surpass a threshold fraction of votes. The low thresholds in Israel and Italy favour representation of small political parties.

The list system in Iceland, because the political parties "did not accomod ate women"33, led to the formation of a women's alliance to contest municipal and national elections. This reasonably successful strategy is different from that used elsewhere in PR systems, where women have benefitted from changed attitudes in some political parties, several of which have for years now alternated women and men on their lists, ensuring that women get half the seats that their party obtains.

The single-transfer-vote (STV) system of proportional representation is used in elections to the Australian and Irish Senates. This system is designed to minimize the influence of political parties in the election of candidates, achieved by having each voter list all the candidates standing in her/his district in order of preference. In STV the number of seats held after an election is arrived at (after all the arithmetic) as in the list system, proportionally.

Young connects this information with the influences of the different systems on female representation, and also examines the other advantages and drawbacks of the various systems. I caution, however, that what some may regard as advantages of a system, others may sometimes look upon as drawbacks.

The single-member systems have the severe drawback of underrepresenting small parties and too easily giving the most popular party an absolute majority. For example, in Canada a party commanding 43 percent of the popular vote will generally have a large absolute majority in the House of Commons, enabling it to make new laws that are repugnant to the majority. In fact, this has been going on for fifteen uninterrupted years. Such systems do not favour the election of women, but in countries such as Canada and Britain, where it is seen as desirable to have numerous women in parliament, the fraction of women in the legislatures amounts to more than a token presence. Currently, 17.5 percent of the seats in Canada's House of Commons and 21 percent in the British are held by women.

To date, list-PR systems have proved to be the most favourable to the election of women, but they depend upon the attitudes of the political parties. There are therefore no guarantees for women's representation under PR or any of the systems described above. If one compares countries using a particular electoral system, there is more spread in fraction of women elected within that system than there is systematic difference between systems.

To continue discussing PR systems for a moment, these would appear to prevent almost altogether the election of independent candidates, that is, candidates without party affiliation. In Canada and Britain, the appearance of independents has a long and worthy tradition, even though recent parliaments have not seen very many of them. Until much needed electoral and constitutional changes are effected in Canada, we need many more independent members in the House of Commons.

NEW SYSTEMS

The previous section should be sufficient to show that women's representation is always at risk in any of the present electoral systems. It happens also that the representation of women is nowhere fully satisfactory in national legislatures, notwithstanding huge improvements in several countries since WWII. The reason is that representation of women is dependent upon political parties at best, and is nowhere systemic.

While my paper is intended to have global application, Christine Boyle's paper2 discusses power sharing between men and women in Canada. She presents a tremendously strong argument for equal representation of women. On p.79F, she states that women are "de facto unenfranchised, and that, for this reason, it is necessary to embark on a reassessment of our current electoral system. One possible legal setting for such a reassessment can be found in the Canadian Charter of Rights . . ." Further on (I paraphrase): Given that women as a group are poorer than men, discriminated against in employment and with repect to pensions, as well as in areas of fundamental rights and freedoms, child care and the whole issue of domestic work and child rearing, "it seems reasonable to conclude that it is impossible for men to represent women. This might not always be the case and it might not be universal, but... it [is] so substantially true as to render reform necessary."

All of the above is surely a sufficient basis to warrant new electoral systems everywhere that give women 50 percent of the seats. Anything less will tie women to one or other of the essentially male-created systems that currently exist, with all their pitfalls. In particular, women have to compete with men for nominations in the single-member and multimember systems, and they must rely on candidate orderings in the PRlist system. Even in the STY system they may be essentially competing against men to get nominated and elected.

A set of systems that entirely removes the element of competition of women against men, and would allow women to pursue a style that is more of their own choosing and making, would be in the form of dual lists. In dual-list systems, voters are presented with two lists of candidates, one consisting entirely of men and the other entirely of women. Such systems are simplest in the analogues of single-member and multimember systems. In the very simplest of such new systems, each voter, whether male or female, would vote for one candidate in the list of men and one in the women's list. The electoral districts would have to be enlarged, unless a larger legislature was contemplated. Variations on this theme would include systems in which women voters get to place two votes on the women's list and only one on the list of men, and viceversa for the men voters. But I do not propose to digress into the merits (if any)' of weighted voting here. The essential principle is to have two lists, so as to guarantee half the parliamentary seats to women. There is no complication in extending this principle to multimember systems; there will be two lists, and an equal number of women as men elected for the larger district.

I am disagreeing slightly with Christine Boyle, who sees the Canadian single-member system as being so inadequate as to require reform independently of the question of women's representation, and thus sees the extension of this system to dual lists, described above, as inadequate. She is right that there is a clear necessity to give women equal representation and, in Canada, a need for a better electoral system in other respects. There could, however, be a risk in raising the two questions at once34. We should not let the matter of equal representation fall victim to a different campaign. Let us first secure half the seats for women, and then see what more is necessary. Quite new perspectives on what further changes would be needed might emerge.

Proportional representation could equally lend itself to dual lists. One proposal has been to leave a system as it is but add the requirement that all political parties alternate women and men on their lists. This proposal would make permanent an unnecessarily rigid system in which the percent of women from each political party would be 50 percent. It is easy to see that such a proposal is far from optimal in gaining the best overall representation in parliaments; some parties may have outstandingly good male lists in a given election, and others exceptionally good lists of women. The proposal also accepts what I see as one of the weaknesses of PR-list systems, namely, that the "Party" decides the order of merit of the candidates. A male-dominated political party could produce an entirely unsatisfactory list from the women's point of view. Setting up a dual-list system within PR is fraught with snares. Young28 errs by assuming more than she need do about how dual lists would be incorporated into the PR-list system. The important thing initially about considering dual lists is to keep open the maximum number of options; for example, the options under PR in which the political parties elect different fractions of men and women according to the vote in total, however, women would gain half of the seats. A system in which each party must have 50 percent women in the House is not only unnecessarily rigid, but would prevent de facto the formation of an all-women's party. Young also objected to dual lists under STY systems, on the grounds that such systems are already complicated enough, and would become more so. We have computers nowadays to do our arithmetic, and other objections to STY systems are easily dealt with one way or another. There is therefore no reason to avoid dual women/men lists under STY

The dual-list systems just described are clearly preferable to what they would be replacing. This would even be true for the Nordic countries, which are already doing well with the representation of women (Table 1). At first I was defensive when people reacted adversely, which most do, to the dual-list concept. "Why would you want to introduce that?" they would say. It was not easy to answer briefly, though there are several answers: "why would you want to retain an electoral system that is clearly keeping women out, except when women use extraordinary tactics, involving huge amounts of lobbying by female voters, and even then they are not getting fair representation. The men don't have to lobby to get men nominated and elected." The short answer is of course: "Why would I not want to introduce dual lists, of women and of men?"

A commonplace, glib reaction to efforts to have more women in parliament is: "In our Party we believe in selecting candidates on merit."

A similar remark, almost word for word, was made in 1997 by a female member of the Canadian Reform Party, which today forms the official opposition in the federal parliament. The Reform Party males have not been impressive in or out of parliament, so the fact that a smaller than average proportion of women from that Party have obtained seats in Ottawa doesn't say much for their concept of merit or their system of rating it, if they have one. Specious though it may seem to scholars, the merit argument is a major obstacle to adopting a dual-list electoral system. It was elected federal M.P. Jack Anawak who opposed a dual women/ men list for the Nunavut Assembly, and he was successful in that the concept was rejected in a referendum,S May 1997. Anawak also used the merit argument, inter alia. The same argument has been used by academics to keep women out of professorial positions35. I therefore believe that the merit argument has assumed the dimensions of a myth, an insidious male myth that is serving to preserve the status quo, and that unfortunately has become part of the belief system of too many women any number greater than zero being too many. It is apparently easy to convince a group that has been underpriviledged and often oppressed for over 40 centuries that it consists mainly of less meritorious people.

The merit argument therefore remains to be countered. However, I had satisfied myself before I undertook to give this paper that we would get a larger number of excellent women into parliaments under dual systems than under any of the present systems - not that there haven't already been many fine women in legislatures. However, the whole process must be discouraging to many potential women representatives as matters now stand.

One critic of the idea of dual lists (private communication, 1998) has suggested that women will eventually do as well as men or better in getting elected without introducing this concept. I rejoin that the timescale may be too long, and that the barriers described in this paper need to be overcome as soon as practicable. The suggestion by my correspondent of an eventual numerical female majority, especially if it is large, is not necessaily reassuring, as it opens up the scenario of parliaments and society becoming female-dominated. Such a model replacing the present mix of male-dominator and partnership conjures up the prospect of backlash that could be worse than anything described by Susan Faludj36. We could later find ourselves back in the nineteenth century or worse. Dual lists would guarantee men 50 per cent of the seats, and that is important.

Nowhere in this paper am I suggesting that women be offered a 50 per cent leadership role out of male condescension. Women should demand equal representation as a right. It is up to them how they go about obtaining it. And they will have a few men on their side.

NEW POSSIBILITIES

It may be obvious that a parliament which regularly seats equal numbers of men and women could display some new characteristics. The first might be a women's caucus cutting across party lines on some issues. The possibilities are many. I had planned to propose modelling some of these as a social experiment, to see what could be learned that way. But Jack Harris (private communication, October 1997) advised against it. He said "let's get them elected and then see what happens," fitting words to end this paper.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Useful information and literature have been supplied by Jack Harris and Cathy Young of St John's, Newfoundland, Michele Pflaum of the Australian Consulate General (CG), Monica Robinson of the Swedish Embassy, Mr Bjornsson of the Icelandic CG, Pauline Madden of the Norwegian CG, Carsten Holscher of the German CG, Peter LarsenLedet of the Danish Trade Commission, Roy Erikson of the Embassy of Finland, Sophie of the French CG, Elizabeth of the Netherlands' CG, and the staff of the CGs of Britain and the United States, for all of which I am most grateful. I also thank Shirley Farlinger and Peter Shepherd, who have been most helpful in the preparation of this paper.

NOTES

1 Rudy Platiel, in The Globe and Mail, 27 January 1997, p.A6. The article, under the heading "Inuit endorse gender-equal legislature" refers to Bernard Shaw, and also to Jack Harris' private member's Bill (Note 3, below). Bernard Shaw, in "The intelligent Woman's guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism" (Penguin Books, 1928) pA81, wrote, on suffragette demonstrations: "I could not be forgiven for warning the suffragettes that votes for women would probably mean their self-exclusion from parliament, and that what they needed was a constitutional law that all public authorities should have a representative proportion of women on them, votes or no votes."

2 Christine Boyle, "Home Rule for Women: Power-Sharing Between Men and Women", Dalhousie Law Journal, 7 (1983) 790.

3 Jack Harris' Bill was put before the Newfoundland House of Assembly in December 1991. The debate is reported in the House of Assembly Proceedings Vol XLI No.8 pp. 254-259. The bill was defeated. Mr Harris is the lone member of the House who belongs to the New Democratic Party. The Party forms the government in two provinces, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and holds half of the seats in the Nova Scotian legislature.

4 Teresa Gorman's 1992 effort was an attempt to amend the Representation of the People's Act. An extract from one of her speeches in the debate is quoted by Jack Harris in the House of Assembly Proceedings, lac cit, p.256.

5 The Nunavut Implementation Commission was set up to prepare for the Nunavut district legislature, due to begin its functions in 1999. The people of Nunavut are predominantly Inuit. The Chief Commissioner for Implementation has been Jack Amagoalik. The proposal for equity was defeated in a referendum 5 May 1997. Federal M.P. for the Northwest Territories, Jack Anawak, was influential in defeating the proposal see The Globe and Mail, 28 January 1997, p.A1 and The Toronto Star, 27 May 1997, p.A2.

6 The Economist, 28 June 1997, p.52.

7 Vandana Shiva, "Staying Alive: women, ecology and development" (Zed Books, 1989). On p.45 the author states: "The existence of the feminine principle is linked with diversity and sharing."

8 Merlin Stone, "When God was a Woman" (Harvest/HBJ, 1976).

9 Marija Gimbutas, "The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6500-3500 B.c., Myths and Cult images" (Thames and Hudson, 1982). In the conclusions she writes: "In Old Europe the world of myth was not polarized into female and male as it was among the Indo-European and many other nomadic peoples of the steppes. Both principles were manifest side by side ... Neither is subordinate to the other; by complementing one another, their power is doubled. "The Old Europeans' mythical imagery and religious practices were continued in Crete [long after the last of the Kurgan waves]. The Minoan culture mirrors the same values, the same glorification of the virgin beauty of life. The Old Europeans had taste and style whimsical, imaginative and sophisticated; ..."

10 Riane Eisler, "The Chalice and the Blade" (Harper and Rowe, 1987).

11 Two central statements about Goddess worship can be found in Merlin Stone's "When God was a Woman" (lac. cit.). One is that the Goddess, whose name varied according to the local language, seemed to be universal in Neolithic times; her name meant Queen of Heaven. The other, which she attributes to Wm. Robertson Smith, is that "as a result of the kinship system, the sexual identity of the head of the family formulated the sexual identity of the supreme deity." This latter concept ties the changeover from the Goddess to a supreme male deity inextricably with the transition from the old style of social system to the more recent male-dominant one.

12 Riane Eisler, lac. cit., p.18: "In the various incarnations of Maiden, Ancestors, or Creatrix, she is the Lady of the water, the birds, and the underworld, or simply the divine Mother cradling her divine child in her arms." On p.19: "... here the supreme power governing the universe is a divine Mother who gives her people life, provides them with material and spiritual nurturance, and who even in death can be counted upon to take her children back into her cosmic womb."

13 Riane Eisler, lac. cit., chapter 4.

14 Riane Eisler, lac. cit., pp.130-134. Early Christian nonviolence and rejection of war is discussed by Walter Wink in "Engaging the Powers" (Augsburg Fortress, 1992) chapter II.

15 Patricia Aburdene and John Naisbitt, "Megatrends for Women" (Villard Books, 1992) p. 115.

16 Most of these aspects of suppression of women are so well understood they need no reference here. However, the significance of pornography is not generally understood by men. Catharine MacKinnon gives an important picture of this great problem in "Feminism Unmodified" (Harvard University Press, 1987) and "Only Words" (Harvard University Press, 1993) Part I.

17 I refer, of course, to the button that launches armageddon from nuclear silos, none of which was abandoned when the Cold War "ended" in 1990. Since this paper was first presented India and Pakistan have exploded nuclear bombs underground, thus making public their entry into some kind of nuclear arms race. Evidently neither side has drawn appropriate conclusions from the previous nuclear arms race, or from the great difficulties Russia and the USA are currently having in disposing of their unwanted plutonium. Within the essentially male hierarchies there must therefore be effective mechanisms for reinforcing the life-destroying determination to invest in such weapons. This is completely in keeping with worship of a god of war- it needn't be a graven image. Together with very many peace people 1 have shared the apprehension that the end of civilization could be near. We didn't need the feminists to tell us that, though they have put it in a new light; but we did need the archaeological findings which reveal that peaceful societies existed for over two thousand years in regions that have been war-torn ever since the gods of war displaced the ancient Goddess. The new knowledge supplements nicely the work of peace researchers such as Anatol Rapoport who rejects "the assumption that military capability is a necessary component of security in today's world" in "Defending Europe: Options for Security" (Taylor and Francis, 1986) p.272. The archaeological findings also add the new dimension that some of us already recognized intuitively, that the male-dominator model of society, wedded as it is to militarism, must be displaced, and that a partnership model can be made to work successfully.

l8 Doris Anderson, in "Rebel Daughter" (Key Porter Books, 1996) p.268, concludes her fifteenth chapter as follows: "I learned a great deal about the dynamics of women's organizations, which are far more democratic, inclusive, and caring of people, the environment, and society than most hierarchical, competitive male structures. I am more firmly convinced than ever that unless there is more input from women in our society at every level, the world is doomed."

19 Patricia Aburdene and John Naisbitt, in "Mega trends for Women" (Villard Books, 1992) have devoted chapter 6 to reviewing the literature on "Collaborative Couples." They quote the [United States] Small Business Administration's report that "husband-and-wife businesses represent the fastest-growing segment of the business population." A more recent reference is: Kathy Marshak, "Entrepreneurial Couples: Making it work at work and at home" (Davies-Black Publishing, 1998). In such enterprises real partnership between men and women is not automatic; it must be worked at.

20 At global level, international loans through the World Bank, and trade agreements have caused many countries to change important legislation so as to conform with an external view of how they should run their affairs. The overall effects are to increase poverty and to facilitate world dominance by a financial elite over which few have any control. See, for example, Catherine Caufield, "Masters of Illusion: the World Bank and the Poverty of Nations" (Henry Holt & Co., 1996).

21 Linda McQuaig, in "The Cult of Impotence" (Penguin Books Canada, 1998), shows how elite elements of the business and financial world, with help from neo-conservative press and a civil service devoted to a particular economic dogma, were able to obstruct a socially necessary determination of the Liberal Government to reduce unemployment in the 1990s. The opposing voices were simply ignored in camera and muzzled outside. The players in that drama are all men, a fact she fails to note.

22 An example of the effect of the male structure in government can be found in Doris Anderson's account of her work as "chair" for the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, in "A Rebel Daughter" (Key Porter Books, 1996) chapter fourteen.

23 The desire of large international corporations and financial institutions to determine the nature of world order is evident from the trends in globalization, especially trade or investment agreements that reduce the autonomy of governments, that is, their ability to fulfil the mandates for which they were elected. The character of such trends are essentially male-dominant, in that the corporations have not collectively assumed responsibility for Mother Earth. The motive is rather, striving for greater control, regardless of the consequences to the planet. Considerations of this type reinforce the conclusions such as Eisler's and Doris Anderson's that the male-dominator mode will lead to the destruction of civilization. For trends in globalization see, for example, William Greider, "One World, Ready or Not" (Simon and Schuster, 1997).

24 NATO still clings to the life-destroying principle of a defence strategy based upon first use of nuclear weapons, should its forces be driven, during conflict, into a tight corner.

25 There is a recently created post of Deputy Secretary-General at the United Nations that is now held by a woman, Louise Frechette, formerly an ambassador of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. At the same time, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway's former prime minister, heads the World Health Organization. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, is U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights; while Sadako Ogata is U.N. Comissioner for Refugees.

26 Months after I wrote the "Introduction to the sexes," This Magazine published a statement from Jack Amagoalik of his hope that a gender-balanced legislature could "provide the political landscape with some civility that hasn't been there in the past." This Magazine, March-April 1997, a special issue on culture and ethnicity, pAO. The choice of the word civility is most poignant.

27 See the discussion of Christine Boyle's paper in the section: New Systems.

28 Lisa Young, "Electoral Systems and Representative Legislatures: Consideration of Alternative Electoral Systems." July 1994. Publication number 94-L-206 of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. 60 pp. Lisa Young's paper cites nearly sixty other studies.

29 Young uses the word plurality to describe the simple majority, that is, more votes than any other one candidate, and majority to mean absolute majority, that is, more than half the votes. I shall not use the word plurality which means the opposite in some places, that is, absolute majority.

30 Lisa Young, lac. cit., p.9.

31 Lisa Young, lac. cit., p.14.

32 Lisa Young, lac. cit., p.2l.

33 Lisa Young, lac. cit., p.22. See also, Jan de Grass, "Reckoning in Reykjavik," in Horizons, 4, No.2 (March 1986) p.18.

34 One risk is that a complex motion trying to accomplish many things is more likely to be amended in ways that remove one or more of the essential features. A motion for equal representation of women should stick to that one issue.

35 An extraordinary example of this has been in the Physics Department at the University of Toronto where the merit argument was used from time to time as an excuse for not offering an assistant professorship to a woman candidate. The effect was that no assistant or more senior female professor was appointed for over thirty years. It was not a conscious effort to keep women out, but the hiring committees were all male, most of them people who had not thought through the meaning of merit from a dual point of view. When external criticism of the department built up as it eventually did, the hiring committees continued to consist mainly of men, at first still not including enough of the few men who were known to favour a level playing field for women in the hiring process.

36 Susan Faludi, "Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women" (Crown Publishers, N.Y.,1991).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Series, Reports and Documents of the Inter-parliamentary Union.

No. 29 "Towards partnership Between Men and Women in Politics," Geneva, July 1997. No. 28 "Men and Women in Politics: Democracy Still in the Making," Geneva, January 1997.

No. 27 "Democracy Through partnership between men and Women in Politics," Geneva, 1997.

No. 22 "Plan of Action to Correct Present Imbalances in the Participation of Men and Women in Political Life," adopted by the Inter-Parliamentary Council, 26 March 1994.

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