Where women stand: parliamentary candidate selection in Canada

A notable gender gap in candidate selection still exists in Canada. While the five major political parties all used a similar decentralized candidate selection process in the 2015 Canadian federal election, the proportion of women candidates varied significantly by party. Placing the authority for selection with constituency-level party organizations limits the ability of parties to impose top-down gender parity policies and also, in principle, makes the process sensitive to demographic and political differences among constituencies. However, the results of mixed-methods analyses show limited influence of traditional local political and demographic variables, but a strong effect of party. The findings also show significant spatial clustering, suggesting that factors such as local social networks may help explain the variation in the nomination of women candidates. We conclude by discussing how party cultures and social networks might reflect supply and demand obstacles for potential women candidates, and how these factors might present challenges to achieving gender parity among federal candidates in Canada.