Why it's important & what is needed for more women to enter politics. With Marcelle Mersereau, former provincial Minister and municipal councillor, Past president of the NB Liberal Party and current national campaign co-chair of Liberal Party of Canada and Anne-Marie Gammon, Bathurst City councillor & community activist. 1h 25mins Bilingual. Click here to listen 

Column by Chairperson Elsie Hambrook, 2009

Ninety years ago, in 1919, New Brunswick women finally got the right to vote in provincial elections. Women’s groups had been lobbying for it for at least 50 years… To this day, women’s participation in public life remains a significant part of the women’s movement struggle. Women were then very much expected to be of the private world – to be at home. Women now participate in the public world but the adjustments that their “stepping out” of the limited role in the home make necessary, to the home and labour force, the public and private worlds, are a long time coming…

Some have written that it was the effects and the questioning provoked by the First World War that finally made many jurisdictions like N.B. give women the vote. What will it take for women to gain the half of the elected seats that is theirs to claim? - Excerpts, column by Chairperson Elsie Hambrook, April 2009.
 

Mary Walsh solved the riddle of why there aren't more women in politics as the comedian picked up her honorary doctorate from McGill Univ. on Friday.
"Women don't really want to be in politics (because) it's so hard to keep the makeup on both faces," she said to laughter from the 1,700 graduating students… Walsh said describing Stephen Harper as a control freak is putting it mildly. "It doesn't quite capture how freakishly controlling the man apparently is," she told the packed hall of students and their families. (It's) into the kind of dominance and restriction rarely seen outside a bondage and discipline dungeon."... - Excerpt, Mary Walsh gets degree from McGill and says PM is a control freak, Canadian Press, 14 Nov. 2008.
 

Factsheet

Chapter on Positions of Influence in the 2008 Report Card on the Status of Women in New Brunswick.

More than one unsuccessful candidate in the recent municipal elections in New Brunswick was heard saying that New Brunswick needs to limit spending by municipal candidates. ... The reasons behind spending limits at other levels of politics are the same good reasons why there should be limits at the municipal level. Otherwise, special interests, whether they are developers, industrialists, unions or conservationists, can invest to ensure their representative gets in. ... How is that a woman's issue? Women have less income, are less well connected and more rarely represent moneyed interests. But while that results in disproportionate effect on women and aggravates the problem of too few women in politics, the main reason to support spending limits is to protect democracy, no less... - Excerpt, column by Chairperson Ginette Petitpas-Taylor, Times & Transcript, 15 May, 2008.

Consultez la section des publications du Conseil consultatif portant sur la « Politique » 
 

Suggestions for action to get more women into government and to turn up the heat on women's issues. Compiled by the NB Advisory Council, April 2008.

Listen to the presentations at the Lunch & Learn in Moncton, 14 November, 2007 with Dieppe Councillor Brenda LeBlanc and Moncton Councillor Kathryn Barnes. In French and English. 80 minutes. This session is one of a series being organized by the New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women, in anticipation of the May 2008 municipal elections in N.B. What if, instead of fighting city hall, you joined it? Click here to listen

When there are a few women in politics, politics changes women, but when there are many women, it is politics that change . . . Today's citizens want societies that are more open, more diverse, and more inclusive. With more women in positions of leadership, we will be able to advance that ideal. - Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, June 2006.

 If the New Brunswick government holds a referendum on proportional representation, Premier Bernard Lord said he likely won't set a high threshold for the Yes side to meet.