Women return as councillors

For whatever reason voters had when marking ballots for city council, they made the decision to add three women to the group.

For the last three years, Mayor Shari Green was the lone woman in the group of nine, but that has now changed with Saturday's election of Jillian Merrick, Terri McConnachie and Susan Scott.

"I'm particularly delighted about the gender change," said re-elected incumbent councillor Garth Frizzell. He noted that with the addition of the three, it brings the percentage of women on council to 33 per cent.

"That's above the 30 per cent, which is what the United Nations says is the minimum amount to have the voices of a group heard," Frizzell said. "So I'm very excited to see that change.

"The link between the extent of women's participation in political institutions and their contribution to the advancement of women has been the subject of extensive research," said the Human Development Report, published for the UN's Development Programme in 1995. "Although no definite relationship has been established, a 30 per cent membership in political institutions is considered the critical mass that enables women to exert meaningful influence on policies."

According to online information service CivicInfo BC, the gender breakdown for municipal councils across the province - including mayors and councillors - is 37.1 per cent women to 62.9 per cent men. The percentage of women elected as councillors only is 38.9 per cent, while 44 of the province's 160 elected mayors are women.

The newcomer with the biggest mandate is Merrick, who earned 6,829 votes to come in sixth place - just shy of 250 votes over McConnachie.

Former councillor Debora Munoz missed the council table by 95 votes behind eighth-place finisher Scott.

"I think Prince George definitely recognized the need for more women on council and we saw that pretty clearly in the outcome," said Merrick.

Elections are interesting things, said Murry Krause, who was re-elected to his sixth term.

"You never quite know what makes the community choose one person over another. We've been very lucky - over the years we've had wonderful candidates, and we had wonderful candidates this time," Krause said. "Maybe it was a result of us having a three-year term where there was one woman on council and other people saw it as maybe something that was deficient."

Over the past five terms, council has maxed out with three women at the table. Since 1999, only the 2005-2008 term had the same number of female voices as was just elected, when Munoz was joined by Shirley Gratton and Sherry Sethen.

"I think there the community sent a big signal [Saturday night], electing the group they did," said re-elected incumbent Brian Skakun, who also highlighted the number of women on council.

"I think we have a really good make-up, so think the community spoke loud and clear saying we wanted a bit of a shift."