Women's Electoral Presence: Refuting the Notion of a Municipal Advantage.

This paper examines the electoral presence of women at the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government. Contrary to "the higher, the fewer" thesis - a dominant strain in the women and politics literature - this paper suggests that female legislators are present in roughly equivalent proportions across all three levels of government in Canada. The data presented here cast doubt on the notion of a municipal advantage for women and, unlike prior analyses which have tended to focus on a limited number of provinces, a distinct time period, or a select group of larger urban centres, this paper includes all provinces and territories, rural, urban and metropolitan municipalities, as well as a longitudinal dataset. The findings suggest considerable variation in women's electoral presence with female legislators sometimes finding greater electoral success at the federal and provincial levels than at the municipal level, but the proportion of women at any level of government rarely ever exceeding 25% of all elected officials. The paper thus challenges a persuasive theme in the literature on women in politics. It suggests that the notion of a municipal advantage serves to conceal the extent of women's electoral under-representation and the persistent barriers that women continue to face in the electoral arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]