Years Observers: Re-Election Bids and Leadership Capabilities

years observers: That list now includes Alberta's Rachel Notley, the last woman standing among Canada's first ministers until incoming premier Jason Kenney takes power and the seventh female provincial leader to be turfed from office in the past six years, according to CTV. Observers see the string of electoral defeats as part of a larger trend rooted in negative assumptions about women's leadership capabilities, adding their absence from high government office also has troubling implications for the country's short-term political prospects. Women made up nearly half of the country's provincial and territorial leaders in 2013, but those ranks have slowly thinned as a succession of female premiers covering the entire political spectrum lost their re-election bids. Melanee Thomas, a University of Calgary professor who researches the causes and consequences of gender-based political inequality, said female leaders still face a double-standard regardless of their party affiliation or defining policy issue. What I would say is that the way people interpret what they do is gendered, Thomas said in a telephone interview. I would never say that their gender is the number one factor in this. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.