Many thanks to Gina for this timely contribution and for all the effort calculating stuff. Apologies if I screw any of it up, first time trying to post via an iPod app...
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Ok- so this post is going to be a little Auckland-centric, although I would love some gender analysis from other parts of the country. It's good to learn how New Zealand women are doing at getting elected to our councils, community boards, and DHBs.
We have a male Mayor in Len (which is a fantastic result). It will be very interesting to see who he selects as Deputy Mayor. It has been my impression that when the Mayor is of one sex or the other they often select the opposite as their deputy. I am hoping for a female deputy mayor. Penny Webster, Penny Hulse, and Ann Hartley, could all be contenders. I suppose Len could go for Ann or Penny Webster to unite the North with the South, but I think it's more likely Len will reward the West and go for the experienced Deputy Mayor in Penny Hulse. The next few weeks/months are going to be very interesting.
We have 8/20 women as councillors- that's 40%, and on preliminary results I got 61 women out of 149 local board members which is almost 41%. I haven't done the percentages on DHBs but the count is 5/7 for ADHB, 3/7 for WDHB, and 2/7 for Counties Manakau DHB.
The numbers are better than what I thought they might be, but I do get concerned that 40% seems to be the ceiling for women when it comes to governance. There's a heap more analysis to do. Like- North/South/East/West which I might try tomorrow, and how many ethnic/asian/pacific candidates were selected. AND- just on the face of it- a serious lack of Maori representation.
My question- where to from here to get to 50/50?
Gina
4 comments:
A genuine question. What proportion of candidates were women?
My pet theory is that there is not much a problem of getting people to vote for women candidates, but there are barriers to having women put themselves forward for election or gain nominations from tickets etc.
If I have the time, I'd calculate the stats myself, but someone here may have already done it?
I might try and do the stats tomorrow. Yes that is always a problem- getting women to stand. Interesting that Cr Toni Millar didn't go for a C&R ticket. And in West Auckland local boards there were 2 C & R local board tickets with no women on them I think. I might analyse how they left/right tickets did on gender as well.
What matters is not whats between a persons legs but what is in their heads...time will tell....
I agree that this issue is mostly to do with the selection of candidates. When I voted, I mostly voted based on my perception in favour of candidates who would promote policies that could broadly be defined as left wing or progressive rather than on the sex of the candidates.
I think I did vote for a couple of women who explicitly supported some feminist aims eg women's health issues. But I voted for several leftie men over right wing women. So I would be interested in the break down of gender related to position on the political spectrum for all the candidates.
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