Nicole McMahon, University of Calgary
Municipal governments have the ability to shape the communities they serve across Canada. They have a wide range of responsibilities, from managing public services and infrastructure to enacting bylaws and policies that impact the lives of residents.
Mayors often act as the public face of the municipality, providing leadership and representing the community at official events. Council members, on the other hand, bring diverse perspectives and contribute to the decision-making processes. Their responsibilities include attending council meetings, engaging with constituents, and participating in various committees. Given the variety of roles and responsibilities combined with the diversity of people on municipal councils, it is important to understand how local politicians view their strengths as an elected representative and whether the perceptions vary by gender.
To understand how local politicians perceive their performance as an elected representative, I use data from the Canadian Municipal Barometer (CMB) in 2023. Local politicians were asked to share how they think they perform compared to the average municipal elected representative on the following tasks/responsibilities:
For all tasks/responsibilities, respondents were asked “do you think you perform better than the average municipal elected representative, worse than average, or about the same as others?” The options available were: “Much worse than average”, “A bit worse than average”, “About average”, “A bit better than average”, or “Much better than average.”
For the purposes of this post, I will be focusing on Responsibility 1, 3, 5, and 8. Table 1 presents the summary statistics for gender and the four responsibilities.
Table 1: Summary Statistics
The following four figures illustrate the information presented in Table 1.
Figure 1: Reading reports and briefing material to prepare for policy discussions at council meetings
Figure 1 illustrates the performance perception for Responsibility 1: “Reading reports and briefing material to prepare for policy discussions at council meetings” by gender of the respondent. The black bars show responses from men and the blue bars show responses from women. The x-axis indicates their performance perception, and the y-axis shows the percentage of respondents who selected each option (the exact percentages are above each bar).
The majority of respondents, regardless of gender, consider their performance preparing for policy discussions at council meetings to be a bit better than average or much better than average. Women selected these options slightly more than men did. There is a very small percentage of respondents who perceive their performance as "A bit worse than average," with 2% of men and 0.5% of women selecting this option.
Figure 2: Carefully scrutinizing budget documents and financial reports
Figure 2 illustrates the performance perception for Responsibility 3: “Carefully scrutinizing budget documents and financial reports” by gender of the respondent. The black bars show responses from men and the blue bars show responses from women. The x-axis shows the performance perception categories, ranging from "Much worse than average" to "Much better than average," while the y-axis shows the percentage of respondents who selected each option, with exact percentages displayed above each bar.
Very few respondents perceive their performance as “Much worse than average”, but about 4.5% of men and 9.3% of women think they are “a bit worse than average” at scrutinizing budget documents and financial reports. The majority of respondents, regardless of gender, place themselves “about average” or “a bit better than average.” The most noticeable gender difference is in the highest performance perception category, “much better than average.” Around 25% of men consider themselves much better than average at scrutinizing budget documents and financial reports compared to about 17% of women.
Figure 3: Advocating on behalf of the municipality to provincial and/or federal policy makers
Figure 3 illustrates the performance perception for Responsibility 5: “Advocating on behalf of the municipality to provincial and/or federal policy makers” by gender of the respondent. The black bars show responses from men and the blue bars show responses from women. The x-axis indicates their performance perception, and the y-axis shows the percentage of respondents who selected each option (the exact percentages are above each bar).
Similar to Figure 2, a very small percentage of respondents perceive their performance as "Much worse than average," with 1.5% of men and 0.8% of women selecting this option. Slightly more respondents (8.2% of men and 9.8% of women) perceive their performance at this level to be a bit worse than average, but these are still fairly small proportions of respondents. The majority of respondents consider themselves to be about average or a bit above average at advocating on behalf of the municipality to provincial and/or federal policy makers. Nearly a third of men and women selected either of these options. Fewer respondents thought they were much better than average at advocating on behalf of the municipality and there is minimal difference across gender (15.6% of men and 15.8% of women).
Figure 4: Serving as a voice for historically underrepresented communities
Figure 4 illustrates the performance perception for Responsibility 8: “Serving as a voice for historically underrepresented communities” by gender of the respondent. The black bars show responses from men and the blue bars show responses from women. The x-axis indicates their performance perception, and the y-axis shows the percentage of respondents who selected each option (the exact percentages are above each bar).
In general, the majority of respondents feel they are average or better at serving as a voice for historically underrepresented communities. Few respondents, just over 11% of men and around 6% of women, perceive their performance at serving as a voice for historically underrepresented communities as "Much worse than average” or “A bit worse than average.” Around a third of respondents, men and women, think their performance is about average. The higher categories (a bit better than average and much better than average) suggest that women tend to see themselves as representing historically underrepresented communities more than men.
The figures presented highlight the gender differences in self-perceived performance compared to the average municipal elected representative on several common tasks and responsibilities. There are interesting differences across the different tasks and responsibilities, as well as interesting gender differences within each task/responsibility. In general, very few respondents consider themselves to be much worse than average or a little worse than average at any of the four responsibilities.
There is a higher percentage of respondents (both men and women) who consider themselves "Much better than average" (30.3% of men and 34.4% of women) for reading reports and briefing material to prepare for policy discussions at council meetings (Figure 1), compared to just 11.8% of men and 19.6% of women who consider themselves much better than average at serving as a voice for historically underrepresented communities" (Figure 4). It is possible that local politicians, regardless of gender, feel more confident in the administrative side of their positions like preparing for council than the representational side of the position such as representing historically underrepresented populations.
Overall, women tend to rate their performance as higher than average for reading reports and briefing material to prepare for policy discussions at council meetings (Figure 1) and serving as a voice for historically underrepresented communities (Figure 4). Men rate their performance slightly higher in scrutinizing budget documents (Figure 2) and advocating on behalf of the municipality to provincial and/or federal policy makers (Figure 3). These initial figures suggest there are both gender and responsibility differences in how local politicians perceive their performance as an elected representative.
