Women’s participation in decision making - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 217

of already dominant groups (Pateman 1989; Young 1998). Paul Quassa
(1997) argued that 'each and every able Canadian elector has the right to
run for office … we don't elect people because they are men or women, but
because they have experience and have proven their ability to constituents'.
In light of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, gender parity
was seen to be superfluous, as a legal requirement for and commitment to
equality already existed.
Supporters of gender parity attempted to point to the reality of women's
under-participation and the institutional barriers inherent to governance
structures (Nunavut Implementation Commission 1995). Martha Flaherty
saw Nunavut as a unique opportunity to reverse this trend:
We can avoid some of the problems with existing governments, one of
the most significant problems being the under participation of women …
in the old days, Inuit survived in the harsh environment through coopera-
tion, and now NIC is proposing to carry on this long-standing tradition
of working together.
(1994)
In attempting to incorporate an acknowledgement of gender difference into
the structure of the legislative assembly, supporters of the proposal were chal-
lenging powerful notions about the nature of representation in the public
sphere. The public sphere was, in many ways, constructed largely in contrast
to the assumed particularity and subjectivity of power relations within the
home (Phillips 1998). Feminist scholars argue that this contrast resulted in
two concepts that powerfully characterize modern political thought: the pub-
lic/private divide and the related notion of women's responsibility for the
spheres of domesticity and reproduction and men's obligation to the public
world of economic and political life (Okin 1998). This created a situation in
which both women and women's issues are excluded from the public sphere
of political life (Pateman 1989; Okin 1998; Phillips 1998; Young 1998).
While it is important to exercise caution in relating Western literature on the
public/private divide to non-Western societies, much of the evidence outlined
in this case study points to the influence of Euro-Canadian political ideas and
institutions in shaping Nunavut's politics.
The gender parity proposal can be seen as a 'rights-based' approach,
despite the fact it could be argued that the proposal's detailed implementa-
tion mechanisms and practicality overcomes the criticism frequently levelled
at the use of rights language, namely that rights are meaningless without the
mechanisms that allow rights to be realized. Regardless, the proposal is based
in the idea that women have a right to be involved in politics and seeks to
implement this right by moving Inuit women into formal political institu-
tions. The failure of the gender parity proposal essentially ended productive
dialogue about how to involve more Inuit women in political activity and, in