Kate Graham - Govern Like a Girl: The Women Who Became Canadas First Ministers

Contents

Introduction

Who gets to make the rules in Canada? Who decides what we learn at school, or how many parks we have, or whether we take care of our environment?

The answer is the governmenta group of people we choose to make decisions for us.

Once you turn eighteen, you can vote. You get to pick who you want to make the rules in your community, your province or territory, and your country. These people have the big job of doing what we call governing; making decisions that affect everyone.

Canada is a big country with lots of different people. We have young people and old people. We have people with black skin and brown skin and white skin. We have tall people and short people. We have people who use wheelchairs and people who need special help to hear or see or speak. We have people who like to be loud and people who like to be quiet. We have people who have different talents, like doing math or writing rules or taking care of others. We have people with many different kinds of experiences, like growing up in a big city or a small town or living in another country.

Its important that our governments are made up of all of these different kinds of people, with many different life experiences, so that when governments make decisions, those decisions help everyone.

But we have a big problem.

Most of the time, our governments dont have enough different kinds of people. Often, they do not include people from a diversity of backgroundsand, they dont have very many women.

Women and girls are half of Canadas population but are only around thirty per cent of the people in our governments. And its even fewer when we look at who gets the top job of being the prime minister or being the premier of a province or territory.

Canada has had twenty-three prime ministers, and only one was a woman.

More than 300 people have been the premier of their province or territory, and only twelve of those people have been women! Some provinces in Canada have never had a woman in charge.

This is a problem because it means that the decisions made by our governments might not always make life better for women and girls. Its one of the reasons that women and girls in Canada are more likely to be poor, more likely to experience violence, and often get paid less money at work. That is just not fair.

Who is the one woman who became the prime minister of Canada to lead our whole country? Who are the twelve women who have been the premier, in charge of their province or territory? What were they like when they were girls? How did they reach the top and what did they do when they got there?

In this book, you will meet the thirteen amazing women who rose to the top jobs in our governments. It wasnt easybut they got there! They showed Canada that women are great leaders and that its okay for them to govern in their own way.

Canada has a long way to go before our governments include all the different kinds of people we have in our country.

This is where you come in.

No one else has the exact same opinions and knowledge and ideas and experiences that you have. No one. Only you know what matters most to you. If there is something you want to see change in our country, you need to tell the people in government who get to make those decisions. When you are old enough, you need to vote for the people you think will make the best decisions for youor run for office yourself, so you can make the rules!

As the leaders in this book learned, you dont need to change who you are to be in charge. In fact, we need more people like you in governmentpeople who know how to govern like a girl.