On daunting frontiers

Susan Delacourt tries to talk seriously about a substantive issue in discussing the rural/urban gap in female representation in the House of Commons:

Rural areas are the daunting frontier for women with dreams of getting elected in Canada, according to new, in-depth research.

Louise Carbert, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, has been systematically analyzing how female politicians are faring in Canada's urban-rural divide. Carbert's work has been published in Sylvia Bashevkin's new book, Opening Doors Wider: Women's Political Engagement in Canada. Carbert's main – and sobering – finding is that women are twice as likely to get elected in Canada if they come from urban areas. In 2008, women were elected in 31 per cent of the most densely populated areas of Canada, compared to 14 per cent in rural districts.

"This ratio has persisted over several decades despite substantial increases in the number of women elected overall," Carbert's study says.

So if you're serious about upping the numbers of women in Canadian legislatures, she says, you have to get out of the cities, and into the country.
...
Some say women are under-represented in rural areas because Conservatives generally win in those ridings and Conservatives aren't that friendly to women politicians. The current Conservative caucus is made up of 16 per cent women.

But needless to say, the Cons will have none of it:

But a spokesperson from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office disputes that notion, pointing out that cabinet ministers such as Diane Finley, Leona Aglukkaq, Gail Shea and Helena Guergis all hail from rural areas, as do several strong Conservative women MPs.

"To suggest there are no strong women representing rural areas flies in the face of the facts and is, in fact, playing to a false stereotype," said PMO spokesman Andrew MacDougall. "It is the Liberals and NDP who have real trouble electing anyone – man or woman – in rural areas because they are out of touch with rural Canada."

Now, seldom will one see such a concise example of the Cons' usual bag of PR tricks at work.

Gross misrepresentation of any position which could possibly operate against their interests, in this case turning an issue of systemic underrepresentation into a fictitious claim of "no strong women"? Check.

Gratuitous bashing of competing parties on issues which have nothing at all to do with the topic at hand? Check.

A complete failure to consider the logical consequences of their own arguments, since if the other two parties in fact "have real trouble electing anyone" in rural areas then the Cons could seemingly fix any underrepresentation issues on their own? Check.

Which raises the question: when that kind of slash-and-burn, reflexively-negative mindset has been rewarded with wins in the past two elections, isn't it a miracle that anybody's still bothering with politics at all?