A single women was - and is - not enough. That would just be tokenism. But in 1920 in Winnipeg it was a start.
This may be unduly harsh on the white middle-aged men who make up majority of most governments in Canada. But on the other hand gender equality is often taken as goal for progressive government.
Edith Rogers elected as MLA in Winnipeg in 1920 was not just a woman but also a Liberal and a Metis, as well as so much more, being the complete human being she was - as we all are. (I hope I covered my bass there well enough.)
And using STV Winnipeg in 1920 provincial election produced political diversity galore among the ten MLAs the city-district elected - four labourites of three different parties and Liberals and Conservatives were elected.
Roger's election can be taken as measure of power exerted by women under STV. I am not alone in this. Many people look at number of women or labour or Liberal or Conservative as measure of fairness of system. Sometimes but not always they even look at it relative to number of votes.
An important point was made elsewhere that a good representational system gives liberty to voter to vote for a person that is like them - a woman, a worker, a senior, a young activist, a southsider, a Westerner, a Torontonian, for example.
In fact the whole idea of local representation - a main support for FPTP and even for MMP as opposed party-list pro-rep - is that someone from your area is better to represent that place than someone from elsewhere. It is rough rule that may not actually apply, especially as sometimes a candidate does not even live in the district in which he or she is running. (The demand for local representation is also used against STV with its large multi-member districts and used to defend small FPTP districts, as used in existing elections and as envisioned as part of MMP. Although the city-wide districts sometimes used in STV is surely no offence against local representation.
But electing someone the same as you - based on look, social status, geographical location, etc. - is not all there is to representation. A good system also gives voters the right to elect the person they want to see elected. Sometimes someone even better than they themselves. A person perhaps "not of the people but for the people." And that is great. It just is more difficult to measure.
Representational politics is not just a sampling of the populace in exact proportion to the overall population. That could be done with a telephone book, if we still had telephone books, that is. And perhaps that is what some would be happy with - but it is not the style of British parliamentary tradition.
Under Parliamentary tradition, voters have right to elect the person they want to see elected, not necessarily the same as they themselves. Certainly we see that, in cases where working-class voters vote Conservative which many see as being against their interest but it is their choice so democracy must accept their choice. We can't stop that "misguided" voting but must only strive for a system where voters have ability to vote for who is like them or someone who they want elected or best case someone who is both, if the voter chooses to do any of these three.
Thus electoral reformers strive for a system where voters will not be for example derailed by strategic voting considerations or lack of range of candidates or their vote wasted, and their views un-represented, unable to see their vote count for something real as they want it to.
Thanks for reading.
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