Monday, February 25, 2013

Female First Ministers yet again

I keep going to this, but with another province now having a woman as premier it is worth considering again.

Here is how they all stack up by time in office - bold means currently in office
  1. Eva Aariak         Nunavut 1565 days
  2. Nellie Cournoyea   NWT     1469 days
  3. Catherine Callbeck PEI     1353 days
  4. Pat Duncan         Yukon    884 days
  5. Kathy Dunderdale   NF       815 days
  6. Christy Clark      BC       714 days
  7. Alison Redford     Alberta  507 days
  8. Rita Johnson       BC       217 days
  9. Kim Campbell       Federal  132 days
  10. Pauline Marois     Quebec   159 days
  11. Kathleen Wynne     Ontario   14 days 
Six of 11 women that have been first ministers are currently in office.  Will this continue in the long term?   We can be reasonably certain that at least two of the current premiers will still be in office through to October 2015.   By that point we will have had at least one female first minister for seven years straight.

I think the measurement of time in office does not really do justice to the differing levels of political importance to the positions.  Leading a large province is very different than a small province of a territory.  I think it is a better measure of how they stack by multiplying their days in office by the population they are governing. 

Doing that gives us this list: 
Bold means currently in office, underlined means won an election
  1. Kim Campbell       Fed 3,786,000,000  132 days PC
  2. Christy Clark      BC  3,142,000,000  714 days Lib
  3. Alison Redford     Ab  1,848,000,000  507 days PC
  4. Pauline Marois     Que 1,257,000,000  159 days PQ
  5. Rita Johnson       BC    715,500,000  217 days Socred
  6. Kathy Dunderdale   Nf    419,000,000  815 days PC
  7. Kathleen Wynne     Ont   180,000,000   14 days Lib
  8. Catherine Callbeck PEI   149,000,000 1353 days Lib
  9. Nellie Cournoyea   NWT    92,000,000 1469 days na
  10. Eva Aariak         Nu     49,900,000 1564 days na
  11. Pat Duncan         Yk     24,800,000  884 days Lib
Of the nine women from partisan legislatures only one could really be considered left of centre, Pauline Marois in Quebec, the other eight are four Liberals and four PC/Socred.

We still have four provinces that have not had a woman as premier - Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  At this point it does not look likely that any one of the four will have woman as premier in the next five years.

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