By Dori Modney (@Dori_Modney on Twitter)

Ready for her? – Province encourages women to seek plublic office

Oct 26, 2016 | 2:51 PM

LETHBRIDGE – Alberta’s Minister for the Status of Women wants to see more women running for public office.  Stephanie McLean says its part of her ministry’s mandate to increase the number of women in leadership roles. 

The four city “Ready for Her” campaign will be in Lethbridge on Thursday, (Oct 27) from 5:00 to 7:00-pm, in the banquet room at the University of Lethbridge Students’ Union building. The event is free and attendees are welcome to bring their children.

The Lethbridge portion of the campaign will be moderated by Melissa Villeneuve and Minister McLean will be joined by Maryanne Sandberg, a Councillor MD of Willow Creek, and City of Lethbridge Councillor Liz Iwaskiw.

Worldwide research has found there is a variety of reasons why women don’t get involved in politics – one of the biggest being that they are generally a family’s primary care giver and have limited time.   The other big issue is that that they don’t feel qualified.

During the last three stops on her tour, McLean says they heard the same question repeated.

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“What degrees do I need?  What hard skills and background do I need to run? Whereas we have seen historically, many men put their names forward, without having university degrees – in some cases, without having completed high school.”

Mclean also noted that a recent study shows that when woman run for civic office, they are as successful at winning elections as their male counterparts.

In the 2013 Alberta civic elections, 490 women were elected to the 1,874 positions across the province, or about 26 per cent of the people elected were women. McLean’s department wants to see at least 50 per cent of ballot names belonging to women in 2017.

Additionally, she wants to encourage women to get involved in the democratic process.

“With this tour, we are not only hoping to increase the number of women who will run in the campaign, but also get more women involved in the process of supporting a woman’s run and getting involved in the campaigning aspect as well.”