Quebec Women and Legislative Representation

Quebec women have had the right to vote and run for office in provincial and federal forums for at least six decades, yet they continue to occupy a minority of seats in Quebec’s National Assembly and in Canada’s House of Commons and Senate.

To explain this situation, Women and Parliamentary Representation in Quebec examines women’s engagement in politics from 1791 to the present. It begins by tracing the path that led to women achieving the right to vote and run for office and then draws on statistics and interviews with women senators and members of Parliament to complete an in-depth portrait of Quebec women’s under-representation and its main causes – political parties and the voting system. This innovative account not only documents the significant democratic deficit in Canada’s parliamentary systems, it also outlines strategies to improve women’s access to legislative representation in Canada and elsewhere.

Manon Tremblay is a professor of political science at the University of Ottawa. Widely published on issues of Canadian and Quebec politics and women and politics, she is editor, most recently, of Women and Legislative Representation: Electoral Systems, Political Parties, and Sex Quotas. Käthe Roth has been a literary translator, working mainly in historical non-fiction, for more than twenty years. She lives and works in Saint-Lazare, Quebec.

"Quebec Women and Legislative Representation fills a long-standing gap in the Canadian literature, which is full of acknowledgements that the Quebec context is different but short on attempts to unpack why.  On this front, Tremblay's treatment of the topic is compelling.... This book will appeal to large segments of the discipline: specialists of domestic politics; graduate students who should see this book on their comprehensive exam lists, and women and politics scholars.... Its first sentence calls women's under-representation 'a problem' rather than a 'question' (1).  Readers who do no approach this book with the same view will no doubt change their positions by its conclusion."

--- Quebec Women and Legislative Representation fills a long-standing gap in the Canadian literature, which is full of acknowledgements that the Quebec context is different but short on attempts to unpack why.  On this front, Tremblay's treatment of the topic is compelling ... This book will appeal to large segments of the discipline: specialists of domestic politics; graduate students who should see this book on their comprehensive exam lists, and women and politics scholars ... Its first sentence calls women's under-representation 'a problem' rather than a 'question.'  Readers who do no approach this book with the same view will no doubt change their positions by its conclusion.