Looking at the tenure of Women as first ministers in Canada.

I first looked at this June 14th 2011 just after Christy Clark became premier of BC.   At that time only eight women had been first minister and only two women had won elections.  Since then five more have won elections and three more have become premiers.

Here is how they all stack up by time in office - bold means currently in office.

1. Eva Aariak         Nunavut 1827 days
2. Nellie Cournoyea   NWT     1469 days
3. Christy Clark      BC      1411 days
4. Catherine Callbeck PEI     1353 days
5. Kathy Dunderdale   NF      1148 days
6. Alison Redford     Alberta  898 days
7. Pat Duncan         Yukon    884 days
8. Kathleen Wynne     Ontario  710 days
9. Pauline Marois     Quebec   581 days
10. Rita Johnson       BC       217 days
11. Kim Campbell       Federal  132 days

Each time I have looked at this I have considered how many person days each first minister has governed for - this is time in office multiplied by population governed.    I think that in many ways it is a better measure of the relative impact of women in politics.    As you can see Kathleen Wynne tops the list when you calculated it this way.

The number is person days governed

1. Kathleen Wynne     Ont 9,125,000,000 Lib
2. Christy Clark      BC  5,650,000,000 Lib
3. Pauline Marois     Que 4,582,000,000 PQ
4. Kim Campbell       Fed 3,786,000,000 PC
5. Alison Redford     Ab  3,273,000,000 PC
6. Rita Johnson       BC    715,500,000 Socred
7. Kathy Dunderdale   Nf    590,700,000 PC
8. Catherine Callbeck PEI   149,000,000 Lib
9. Nellie Cournoyea   NWT    92,000,000 na
10. Eva Aariak         Nu     58,300,000 na
11. Pat Duncan         Yk     24,800,000 Lib

Since the selecton of Eva Aariak to be premier of Nunavut on November 14th 2008 we have always had at least one woman premier in Canada.   This is 2261 consecutive days.

What is also interesting is that three of the women did significantly better than expected in their elections - that being Alison Redford, Christy Clark and Kathleen Wynne.

On the other hand two women were forced out of the office of premier in an atypical manner early on in their first term as elected premier.   

I also looked at this on:

February 25th 2013

October 1st 2013