Vaughn Palmer: But the reduction in testosterone is unlikely to civilize debate in a house bitterly divided after election

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VICTORIA — When the 47 elected NDP MLAs convened at the legislature this week, there were almost twice as many female faces as male faces in the government caucus room.

The New Democrats emerged from Election 2024 with 31 elected members who identified as women, only 16 as men, an unprecedented distribution for the party in government.

The NDP could partly credit the showing to their equity policy, adopted a dozen years ago.

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If a female NDP MLA retires, the party must nominate another woman as her replacement. When a male incumbent retires, his replacement must be a woman or a member of one of the other designated equity groups — persons of colour, Indigenous, LGBTQ, or the disabled.

Even without such a policy, the B.C. Conservatives managed to deliver a caucus of 18 women and 26 men, a 40-60 split. The Greens failed to elect their party leader, Sonia Furstenau, or any of the other women running under their banner. Their two MLAs are both men.

The result was a legislature with an unprecedented 53 per cent of the elected members identifying as women, making B.C. the first province in Canada to have crossed the 50 per cent threshold in female representation.

The........

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