Initiative to get more women elected falls short in Brandon

Tracey Baker is a certified financial planner in Brandon and had her sights set on the recent municipal election, but not because she wanted to run. She wanted other women to have a seat at the table. Her seat at the table is an initiative we started almost three years ago, to be honest with you, with an idea that we wanted to encourage more women to run for city council here in Brandon. In Brandon, only one woman has sat in the mayor's chair. That was more than a dozen years ago. No women ran for the top job this time around, and of the 11 seats on City Council, one is held by a woman who was just elected. I was a little bit disappointed for sure. I mean, we had four women running for City Council, so that was a win for us. Big picture around Manitoba? History was made with a record number of women elected, including the city of Winnipeg. Seven of the 15 councillor positions will be occupied by women, the closest to gender parity that city council has ever had. Incumbent women mayors who lost their seats include communities of East St. Paul, Verdun and Thompson. But that's no reason to be discouraged, says Kathy Valentino, AMM president and Thompson city councillor. Now we have to do our job as... Leaders that are elected to continue to provide and get the information out there like they said so that is available and the knowledge and the mentoring for women to do it again in four years from now. Not only were there more candidates overall who ran in this year's municipal election but the number of people who voted was also higher than Manitobans who went to the polls four years ago. Michelle McDougall, CBC News, Brandon.