The context for a national roundtable on women and politics in 2003

The Context for a National Roundtable on Women and Politics in 2003 National Association of Women and the Law March 2003 Jackie F. Steele* * With excerpts from the NAWL Brief to the Association for Women in Development Conference in October 2002, co-authored by Nancy Peckford. [...] Systemic discrimination thrives in our democratic institutions through the rules of the game, and the informal and highly decentralized gatekeeping processes of political parties. [...] Canadian diversity is not represented in the actors who constitute our national legislature, and marginalized groups have little to no influence in shaping the policy preferences that are pursued by the Canadian government in the name of the population. [...] In Canada, as a result of the stagnation, and even a slight decline in the representation of women in our federal legislature over the past decade, the assumption that the number of women in politics will steadily. [...] The State's Disengagement from Women In the post-war era, the federal government engaged in pan-Canadian nation building with a form of social liberalism3 that included the notion of collective responsibility to be expressed and guaranteed by the state in the form of social rights.4.