Balancing a federal gap New cabinet reflects Trudeau's promise of gender equity

 By SOUBHIK CHAKRABARTI

Business student Sophie Slater said the equal gender balance in the federal cabinet helps her to find hope in a world where she said women are still underrepresented and underappreciated.

For the second time in a row, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled a 50-50 gender-balanced cabinet he said in a statement to media will improve Canada moving forward.

Trudeau retained his position as prime minister after the Liberals were reelected Oct. 21, this time with a minority government.

Slater was looking for a cabinet she said that is fair for everybody, in order to balance out a world that isn’t always fair for women.

For her, that meant a 50-50 gender split.

“There is still that old guy at the office who thinks his secretary should be paid $12 an hour,” Slater said.

“It’s ridiculous, its almost 2020. Is this seriously still an issue?”

Eleanor Fast, executive director of Equal Voice, said she’s happy to see Trudeau keep his promise of another gender-balanced cabinet.

“We're very happy to see that once again we're going to have a gender- balanced cabinet with an equal number of women and men,” Fast said after watching the ceremony at Rideau Hall on television Wednesday.

Equal Voice is a non-partisan organization that is dedicated to equality in gender representation professor of political science at UBC said that assigning women to important cabinet portfolios is something Trudeau excels at.

Historically, she said, women have been given a less crucial portfolio to manage and in turn have had less power.

“Women tend to be appointed to cabinet portfolios that are either not very powerful, not very important, or they're all in what we call the ‘caring policy’ area like Health or Welfare,” Sundstrom said.

“Whereas [in 2015] you had a strong foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland.” more women to be represented in Parliament as a whole in Canada's future. in all facets and levels of Canadian government.

“It’s extremely important to have [women] in high profile positions,” Fast said.

The first session of the 43rd Parliament will begin on Dec 5th.

“We’re also very interested to see the integration of a new portfolio of diversity and inclusion, that will be headed by Bardish Chagger.”

Waterloo MP Bardish Chagger, appointed Minister of Small Business and Tourism in 2015, was named Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth Wednesday, after winning her riding with 48 per cent of the vote.

A record 98 women were elected to Parliament in this year’s election, this is however a far cry from actual gender parity in the house. Out of the 338 members, women represent a mere 29 per cent of all seats in the House of Commons.

Lisa Sundstrom, an associate