Political women, the late Doris Anderson being a stellar example, often advocate list PR because the statistics show that list-PR countries have more women in legislatures. Say it's only a smallish increase, and they say, hey, we'll start with that. Say that list MPs are just stooges for the party bosses who draft the lists, that really the women on the lists are tokens, and they say, tokens are a start, better than nothing. It's pretty persuasive.
But look. The Greens are a PR party in waiting. MMP would put all their leaders in sinecure seats forever, and without MMP they really have no electoral future at all. Elizabeth May's deals, like the one with the Liberals over that Nova Scotia seat, are the kind of leader-to-leader compromise that list PR is designed for. So MMP is good for women, and MMP is good for the Greens. The Greens should be doing everything to make PR look good
But DemocraticSpace, a pretty good info blog on the Ontario elections (and passionate for MMP), reports that the Greens are the worst of all the parties for nominating women candidates: just 20% in this election. You would think they would have sussed out the need to make MMP look good to women voters.
