Women First Ministers: Working To Make The Exceptional Completely Unremarkable – An Interview with Kate Graham

Canada has had only 16 women first ministers. To date, no woman first minister retained has assumed that position, or retained that position, after more than a single general election. Why is that? And why, as of the date of publication, are there only two woman first ministers currently holding office? These are questions Kate Graham has explored in research that has produced two seasons of a podcast, two books, and much discussion among audiences to whom she has spoken. In this one-on-one interview, Canadian Parliamentary Review editorial intern Annie Dowd asks this author and professor how Canadians can change the trend line and ensure the governments we elect are more representative of populations they serve.

Canadian Parliamentary Review: Can you tell us about how you conceptualized the project “No Second Chances” and how your own experience in politics, running in the 2018 provincial election and as the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party in 2020, informed this project?

Kate Graham: The project for me started on doorsteps in London North Centre during the 2018 election. I was a first-time candidate. It was my first time spending all day, every day, knocking on people’s doors and talking about politics.

It was a great experience in lots of ways and that election very much felt like a personal assessment about Kathleen [Wynne]. Should she continue to be the premier or not? What did people think? I was running for the party led by Kathleen Wynne, our first female, openly gay premier, and oftentimes people would say “you seem great, but I can’t support your leader.” I would say okay well, why is that? What is it about her that you don’t like?

Sometimes they would have a policy reason, which is fair game. Hydro, something in the education system, healthcare. But more often than I expected they would just say things like “it’s just her face. I just don’t like her face.” Or they would say “it’s just the sound of her voice.” Consent in schools was big in that election, a hot topic, and they would say “she’s just pushing her agenda on us,” in a way that I felt had homophobic undertones to it.

When the election came and went and every single candidate, new candidates including myself lost, and the party lost official party status. It was a horrific election for the party that I had just joined. More importantly, the part that I couldn’t quite shake was the highly personal nature of the attack.

I’m a political scientist. I teach. I always process these things through research. So, I started researching female first ministers. I was surprised to learn – at the time – that we had only had 12 in a country where we’ve had more than 300 first ministers, they tended to last about half as long as men, and that when they run for re-election, they lose. We re-elect candidates all the time, but we’ve never re-elected a female first minister. That was the beginning of “No Second Chances,” with this apparent, curious unre-electability of female first ministers in Canada.

I approached Canada 2020 and asked them if they would support me, and we were also supported by MasterCard Canada. With a little crew, we travelled literally coast to coast to coast and sat in their [female first ministers’] living rooms and on their front porches. We did extensive interviews about the rise and fall of female first ministers with particular interest in the moment where things started to fall apart. How do they explain this concerning pattern of not seeing women in top leadership roles or with the same tenure or opportunity to contribute as men in these roles?

The beginning of “No Second Chances” was very closely tied to my own experience, but it ended up being a wonderful learning experience about how insightful the lived experiences of people in politics can be for understanding our political system.

The project has been turned into two seasons of a podcast and two books; a third one is coming out next year. It continues to be an area of curiosity for me. Until we see governments that reflect the population they serve and until we see leaders rising up who reflect the population they serve, this has to continue to be an issue for all of us. We haven’t achieved the promise of democracy until that happens, and we’re a long way from that right now in Canada.

CPR: As a follow up, after you pursued this project and spoke with numerous women who did successfully reach first minister positions in Canada, what did you find were commonly the greatest barriers to women’s participation in governance at that level?

Your project “No Second Chances” reveals the common experience of what you call the “glass cliff” in which women achieve first minister status when the chances of success are quite low and then subsequently don’t get re-elected. Can you speak also to the challenges that women face once they do achieve those senior political positions?

KG: I think we have a lot to celebrate in Canada. We’ve removed the formal institutional barriers for women’s participation at all levels, which is good. But, I think that’s kind of the easy stuff. The things we haven’t addressed yet are how unconscious bias contributes to how we think about, how we evaluate, and how we respond to people in leadership roles who don’t look like the mould of who’s been there before. This was a big part of what the project illuminated – the very gendered experience of these first ministers. If they were the first woman in their role, people expected things of them that maybe were not possible.

Christy Clark said it in the simplest and perhaps most pointed way that captured a lot of the perceptions that I heard: for a man you can be tough, and you can be likeable. For a woman you get to be one or the other. When you cross that bridge from being likeable to being tough, that’s the beginning of the end.

For many of these women, their political demise came at the hands of those inside their own party; the party wanted a Hail Mary pass by putting the first woman in and all the fanfare that came with it. Then when it didn’t turn around the electoral fortunes of the party, whether that was even possible or not, as in the Kim Campbell story, it became very much about that leader and a manufactured sense of her deficiencies.

There’s a lot to be learned from those experiences and what they look like inside a party and inside government. Perhaps the bigger problem is the chilling effect that it has when we as a country, and when little girls, only see women leading when they’re losing; when those rises are followed by epic falls. You know the Annamie Paul story; the first time we saw a Black woman on a federal election debate stage, she exited talking about how she didn’t know that breaking the glass ceiling would mean she was cutting her feet with shards of glass on the way out.

Those kinds of observations have a really long tail to them because generations of girls and women look at those stories and think maybe that’s not a place for me. That produces the candidate emergence problem; we have uneven groups of people who are interested in getting involved in politics. Then, it becomes this larger cycle.

It’s a tricky web to really, fully get our heads around and we need to keep chipping away. Where there’s an obvious barrier in place, moving it. Over time, I think the most significant barrier is the unconscious bias and the sexist, misogynistic views that unfortunately are still a part of our culture and our society, and the way this translates into a different experience for women in political roles.

CPR: There was a period in 2013 during which six premiers were women. At the time of this interview, there is only one. How do you explain this regression in representation? Does it or how does it reflect trends that are often seen in relation to women’s participation in parliamentary politics?

KG: The place we are in Canada, unfortunately, reflects where we have been stuck for a long time. Linda Trimble would call this stalled – we’ve been stalled for a few decades. We haven’t seen meaningful progress. We have these periodic blips where we see a number of women elected and it looks like something is changing and then it defaults back to this more consistent trend line.

So, I think a lot of the root problem is the leaky pipeline. If you think about it like a pipeline, you have a group of people who are running for office and then elected and then in leadership roles and then serve as a first minister. The percentage of women gets more acute the further you go down that pipeline as the level of bias gets more acute. So, until we see, at the emergence stage, groups of people who actually reflect the population that they hope to serve, we will not have solved this problem. What we see in Canada today is a reflection of this broader issue. We continue to see one single demographic of older, white, straight, affluent men so heavily overrepresented that there’s essentially an underrepresentation of every other group. That needs to change as early in that political pipeline as possible to solve the problem of seeing leaders who look more like the population they serve.

CPR: While Canada does rank quite high among CPA Regional Rankings for Women in Parliament, it does not make the International Top 10 of Legislatures with the highest proportion of women in parliament. You explore strategies that have worked internationally to empower women to pursue top political roles throughout season two of your podcast. Can you speak to some of the strategies employed elsewhere to encourage and support women parliamentarians to run as candidates to begin with, and how these strategies might be adapted or implemented to improve the representation here in Canada.

KG: This is a problem that could be solved overnight through a quota. We could put a quota in place in a variety of ways: through parties, through nomination processes, in terms of who’s elected. We could look at the New Zealand example of having reserved seats, for example, for the major population. This is a fixable problem that has been addressed elsewhere and that we could do now. We haven’t had a willingness in Canada to do that.

So, instead, I think the more likely strategy here is about looking at incentives, specifically incentives for political parties. For example, if you could only access funding as a party if you met certain objectives with respect to your candidates and the leadership of your party, I think we would see fairly rapid change in who is nominated and who’s holding leadership roles. Until we’re willing to do something intentional and deliberate like that, we’re going to stay stuck. It’s a problem that will very slowly get better over time unless we’re willing to intervene and say, ‘no, this is worth fixing now; in Canada, we must prioritize representation.’

The whole design of our system is based on ensuring different geographies are well represented, and I think that’s a very good thing. We could broaden that, though, and think about what other forms of representation are also important. Then we could design a system that produces the sort of representation we’re looking for. I’d love to see a quota. That’s just my own personal political opinion. In lieu of a quota, I’d like to see incentive changes that force, in particular political parties, to make different choices.

CPR: There seems to be a general agreement around the goal of getting more women involved in politics. But there are different philosophical perspectives and approaches toward achieving that goal. Do you have any strategies or ideas about how best to manage these different perspectives toward this common goal?

KG: We haven’t talked much yet about the increasing polarization within politics. Which is not experienced evenly. Some people are more comfortable with all out combat. This seems to be the case more and more, particularly in Question Period.

The way we do politics now, it’s a hyper masculine, high combat sort of game. It doesn’t have to be that way. I think it turns off people, more likely women potential candidates who are used to collaborating and are open to a diversity of ideas. That’s not the current way we do politics in Canada. Our politics doesn’t always welcome candidates who don’t want to engage in those behaviours, so it can be a real turn off. That’s a part of what needs to be addressed: understanding how our partisan dynamics can create this problem.

On the other side of it, underrepresentation is not a partisan issue, it’s something that affects every political party and all sides of the political spectrum. Efforts to address representation would benefit all parties. Collaboration between parties, like changing the incentive structure, would be well worth it. For political parties, that would help achieve more representation on the left, right, and centre; it should be something supported across the political spectrum. Being conscious about how we do politics and how it affects the potential pool of candidates, and collaborative efforts across parties to address underrepresentation would be positive steps in the right direction.

CPR: We were interested in a point you made during an episode of your podcast, and I believe it came up earlier in this discussion as well, that a lack of gender parity and diversity in politics threatens the legitimacy of our democracy as a whole. Can you speak further on this and perhaps highlight why the issue of gender equality in politics is an issue that does affect all Canadians across party lines?

KG: I’m a big believer in the old adage that progress moves at the speed of trust. We, as citizens, need to trust our governments to give them the permission to do big things.
Our collective capacity to act as a society on addressing climate change or solving inequality requires us to believe in our political institutions and to trust them. There are a lot of indicators that suggest that is falling apart around us, including trust in elected officials.
Take the Edelman Trust Barometer, for example. Every year they do surveys on trusted public officials and leaders; overall, it’s a really concerning picture of decline in democracies around the world, including in Canada. Other indicators are participation, people willing to run as a candidate; voter turnout is an obvious one that also showing signs of decline.

It begs the question, how low can voter turnout go before it’s no longer a generally accepted mechanism to elect governments. How low can trust get before we need to really rethink what the relationship is between citizens and government. Efforts to restore and build trust in politics are absolutely paramount at this moment in time. It is of existential significance. We must find ways to restore people’s faith in politics and political institutions for this model to continue to be successful, in my view.

One way of doing that is having governments reflect the people that they serve. When people look at a government that doesn’t look like them, they see that it doesn’t have people who have their lived experience. There aren’t enough people who’ve experienced poverty or homelessness, people who have a variety of different professional backgrounds.

I think it does cause people to have less trust that government is going to understand them, their life, the things that matter to them, and their family. By extension, there is less trust in the system as a whole. To me, trust and representation go hand in hand. If we want to build and restore trust in politics, then we have to start changing what politics looks like so that it’s trustworthy for more people.

CPR: To expand on that, when you published your project “No Second Chances” no Black women parliamentarians had ever served as a first minister in Canada, and today that remains the case. Indigenous women first ministers have been elected exclusively in the Territories. How do we ensure that first ministers and parliamentarians reflect the diversity of the populations that they serve?

KG: I continue to think about it as a pipeline where we need to focus on the beginning of the pipe first – the candidate emergence or who is running for elected office. We know that this group of candidates is not representative of the population. Thinking about how to change that will translate into better representation in cabinets and in political leaders.

There are things that we can learn from other jurisdictions. Where they’ve really focused on efforts to do that is in the United States. For example, when the Democratic Party changed their nomination process, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was nominated by her brother. He said, “my sister works in a Taco shop, but she’s really good at speaking to people.” The party had opened themselves to say, we need to find candidates beyond the networks of our existing leaders because that’s not producing the representation that we need. We have to go broader into the population and really reimagine what being qualified means. Broader lived experience is what qualifies someone for elected office. Then we need different vehicles for connecting with people who may want to serve in politics but may not have traditionally been a part of those networks – ways to reach these people and tap them on the shoulder to seek a nomination.

The nomination process to me is pivotal in addressing this entire problem, including representation at the most senior leadership level. I’d love to see parties innovating more on that. How do we find an diverse slate of candidates? How are we reaching into communities that we know are chronically underrepresented and changing the incentives to encourage more candidates from underrepresented groups to run?

CPR: Discussions regarding safety concerns for women parliamentarians have shifted following recent incidents, including the murder of Joe Cox in the UK, and alongside the rise in threats of violence on social media. Do you believe that this impacts women’s involvement in politics? How do you think we should be approaching this issue and the discourse that surrounds it?

KG: This must be all our issue. In the case of Jo Cox, of course, but even hearing that female first ministers have security details accompanying their children to school, for example. That’s embarrassing to me as a Canadian. That the level of discourse has gotten to the point where stepping forward to serve as a public servant can bring with it direct physical risk to you and your family. That is totally unacceptable. Again, as a Canadian, that is something that I hope we all stand united against, whether you love or don’t love the person who’s being attacked and whether you support their party or not. Any form of violence or attack on someone serving in elected office or their family members by extension, should be something that we stand united in opposition to.

Now, how to do that becomes a much more challenging issue. Adding security detail seems like the Band-Aid necessary right now. Longer term, I think the understanding that political rhetoric and flags that have the “F-word” and the Prime Minister’s name on them for example, aren’t a helpful contribution even if you’d like to see a change in government.

It’s important to think about the words we choose, who’s looking at those words, what sort of example it sets for how we engage in politics, and what we expect of people who engage in politics. Holding one another to account on how we talk about political leaders, which includes people’s tweets, bumper stickers on their cars, what you say in a coffee shop, and if you’re an elected official, how you talk to your colleagues. All of these actions create a tone and set an example of what’s acceptable and what’s not.

I’m a mom of a four-year-old and I often think if we all held ourselves to the standard that we try to convey to our kids about how to treat one another, the world would be a different place. Things you wouldn’t allow a four-year-old to say to a classmate shouldn’t be allowed during Question Period. It shouldn’t be allowed online when people are talking about people who step forward to serve our country.

CPR: The CPR is working on another project for this theme issue regarding the relationship between women parliamentarian mentors and mentees. Can you speak about any women in politics or parliament that have directly inspired you and your work?

KG: Yes, lots. I got involved when my former MPP, who became a very good friend, Deb Matthews, asked me to run. We got to know each other way before I was in politics and the encouragement to run was really oriented around ‘what are the things that you want to see change and what are you prepared to do about it?’

To me, she really embodied this. She spent her entire life involved in politics in one way, shape, or form, with the idea that we can’t just sit on the sidelines and hope that somebody else is going to fix the things we care about. If you want to see a change you have to ask yourself, what are you personally prepared to do and ask of those around you to do. I’ve found that to be inspiring.

Around the world, there are lots of role models who continue to inspire me. (Former New Zealand Prime Minister) Jacinda Ardern, for instance; particularly her leadership after the Christchurch shooting and during the pandemic. I thought it was absolutely exemplary. After a shooting, she put on a hijab, sobbed with the widows, and then implemented aggressive gun legislation the next day, in that order. Expressions like that show how important it is to have people in politics who lead with empathy and lead with care.

Those are two examples; I could give you a much longer list. I’m excited about a number of people who are engaged in the American election right now. I’m sure we’re all paying attention to that too. There’s no shortage of inspiration when we look at people who step forward and have a very clear idea about what they want to change, and who are prepared to go all in to make it happen.

CPR: Do you have any advice for young women who are interested in pursuing a career in parliamentary politics and who might find the current state of politics discouraging?

KG: Each of us has something that we are unusually interested in or curious about or passionate about. The thing that you talk more about than your friends do, and you still want to talk about it when everyone else is done. That’s a good clue that’s something that the world needs from you.

I hope that young people generally, and particularly young women and women from diverse backgrounds, really pay attention to the thing that you care a lot about and that you want to see change. Then know that we all have more power than we often think we do to make that change.

There’s amazing examples around the world of people who – by using their voice or speaking up, or proposing an alternative, or running for office and winning – are making different decisions than those who came before them. Those can all be transformative paths that improve the lives of many other people.

This is a Barack Obama phrase but, progress doesn’t happen on its own. It happens when we demand it. It happens when people decide that something will be different than it is now. There’s lots to be concerned about as we’ve talked about today regarding the current tone and state of politics, but it will not change on its own. It will only change when people decide that we were going to demand better and we’re going to be better.

In this upcoming generation of young leaders, I hope there not only a clarity on what people care about, what really matters to them, and what they want to change, but also the courage to say ‘I’m not going to just sit and wait for somebody else to do it. I’m prepared to go all in to do whatever I need to make that change.’

CPR: One final question. Do you have any reflections on the impact of your own work, and specifically your project, “No Second Chances”? Or are there any current or future initiatives you’re working on that you can share? For example, you mentioned a forthcoming book.

KG: Yes, it’s an extension of “No Second Chances.” I wrote a kids’ book about Canada’s female first ministers. It’s less about them as political leaders and more about them as kids and the kind of changes they were trying to make. This latest book is an international version of that, about the change that some kids were trying to make. Kids who happened to go on and become prime ministers and presidents later in their lives.

It’s been a fun experience through these books and to talk to kids about what matters to them. I’m also a mom of a four-year-old, so I get the added benefit of spending a lot of time with kids right now. I think there’s something powerful about talking to children while they are young and not waiting until they’re the voting age or they’re in civics class.

It doesn’t have to be about “capital P” politics. Instead, it’s about this sense of agency and this feeling that you have the power to do the things that matter to you. You can make change whether you’re four years old or 10 years old or 25 years old or a grown up. You can effect change in people around you with your voice, with your actions, with your decisions.

You have this power to change other people and other people’s experiences if you choose to use that power. I’d like to see that conversation happening with kids through stories before bed, around breakfast tables and dinner tables, and in classrooms as early as possible. There’s transformative power that can come from that.

That’s my current writing project – kids who became presidents and prime ministers later. I’m hoping to inspire today’s kids to imagine that maybe one day they can be the president or prime minister or effect change in some other positive way in the places and spaces where they are.

Annie Dowd is a member of the 2024-2025 Ontario Legislative Internship Programme. She served as an editorial intern for the Canadian Parliamentary Review in Autumn 2024.