Council will benefit from more women being elected say activists

WELLINGTON COUNTY – Elected councillors and activists for local politics are praising an improved gender balance elected to Wellington County municipalities, saying it improves the diversity of lived experiences to local council.

At the beginning of the 2018-2022 council term, there were 10 women elected out of 48 mayor and councillor positions across eight municipalities in Wellington County. 

As of the recent municipal election, this number has now gone up to 18. Centre Wellington went from having no women or women-identifying councillors to five out of seven seats being women.

Bronwynne Wilton, councillor-elect for Centre Wellington’s Ward 5, said while the last term of Centre Wellington council was unusual for not having any women elected, she and others spoken to were not aware of there ever being a council there made up by a majority of women.

A more diverse council is better, Wilton said, and in her view electing more women with a variety of backgrounds and experience is a good start to having council reflect what the community looks like. 

Wilton also pointed out having greater diversity reflected could encourage a younger more diverse crowd to get more engaged.

“Hopefully a young girl can see women can be decision makers in the community, I think that’s important,” Wilton said. “Likewise, if we move towards more diversity at the committees, people new to the community can see themselves engaged.”

Ward 4 councillor-elect Jennifer Adams noted it was great to see more diversity on council, she focused more on all councillors being new as a sign people wanted change. 

It was clear to Curt Hammond, a local organizer for the Municipal Campaign School (MCS), that Centre Wellington wanted something new out of their council after division and regular split votes in the previous one.

“Quite frankly, I think it took an extremely uncollaborative council for the community to say ‘okay, we want to try something new,’” Hammond said. “That includes making sure that we’ve got gender diversity around the horseshoe.”

MCS is a volunteer initiative based out of Wellington County, Guelph and Oxford County to encourage more diverse candidates to run for municipal office to change the dynamic of mainly white males running or being elected to push for different worldviews and experiences to be represented in public office.

“Our message has always been ‘the more diverse voices that are at the table will ensure better decision making,’” said  Kate Leatherbarrow, MCS organizer out of Oxford County and Woodstock councillor-elect.

Leatherbarrow noted a lot more women ran in Oxford County than previous years, not all successful, but she saw it as a good sign of things to come in the future. 

“We’re holding the door open for future leaders, these grassroots organizations and initiatives to get people onto the ballot,” Leatherbarrow said. “We have to hold our peers and our communities to that standard that we are pushing for, for always a brighter future and always to be more as inclusive as possible.” 

Hammond added he didn’t wish to put pressure on those elected to create radical change but to focus on working collaboratively and to consider the entire community.

Hammond said some of those elected across Wellington County were involved with the campaign school but stressed their success was not directly tied to being involved.

“I think we were part of the bigger zeitgeist in terms of having conversations around ‘who do we want to be supporting for elected office?’” Hammond said. 

However, Guelph MCS organizer Teresa McKeeman said via email women often need more encouragement to run for council and hoped it played a small part in their success. Similar to Centre Wellington, women-identifying candidates will make up a majority of council there too in the next term. 

“Many of the winning candidates participated in our campaign school either as mentors and workshop presenters or as mentees and participants,” McKeeman said. 

“It is our belief that this level of support helped these women decide to run and offered practical advice on how to run a campaign.”