Even on its own, being a mother involves pretty much every superpower you can think of: laser-vision, elasticity (think The Incredibles), telepathy, the ability to repel lethal projectiles, invisibility (yep).
So mothers who also lead active political lives are some kind of special! With an increasingly polarized electorate and a climate emergency confronting us with intensifying drought, flooding and fire, the work of a politician, like that of many mothers, can seem thankless.
We want to express our gratitude and admiration for the extraordinary mothers who are serving as mayors and members of local councils in our region.
Mothers in politics advance gender parity and help to close the gender gap in municipal governments. A 2023 study by the Federation of 91原创 Municipalities notes that women represent 31 per cent of all elected municipal representatives in Canada, and only 22 per cent of municipal mayoral positions.
There are four women mayors in the Capital Regional District, and all of them are mothers: Marianne Alto (Victoria), Barbara Desjardins (Esquimalt), Marie-Térèse Little (Metchosin) and Maja Tait (Sooke).
But it’s about more than percentages. A historically male-dominated culture of politics is transformed whenever a strong-man model of leadership is replaced with “political motherhood.”
By political motherhood, we have in mind more than women politicians who are also mothers; we mean a style of leadership that can be embodied by politicians of any gender. Political motherhood can be likened to the mother trees studied by Suzanne Simard in Finding the Mother Tree.
As Simard shows, mother trees communicate and share nutrients through mycorrhizal networks, establishing a cooperative rather than competitive ecosystem. Likewise, political motherhood eschews the concentration of power and is, instead, about a practice of political generosity. It encourages lateral sharing of power in a distributed life-support system rather than vertical manoeuvering for political self-interest.
Political motherhood finds an analogy in the forest ecology described by Simard: “There is a necessary wisdom in the give-and-take of nature — its quiet agreements and search for balance. There is an extraordinary generosity.”
It involves cultivating networks between neighbouring municipalities for convivial exchange of ideas and collaboration. Political motherhood can be seen in Little’s decision to rotate the role of deputy mayor amongst Metchosin council members, Desjardins’ Open Door policy in Esquimalt, and Langford council’s steadfast practice of answering uncivil attacks with measured civility.
The strong-man culture of politics constantly tries to undermine political motherhood, whether it be through mansplaining, micro-aggressions, or open bullying and threats.
Some of the most promising and brilliant women politicians of the 21st century — for instance, Jacinda Ardern, who was elected as prime minister of New Zealand in 2017 and resigned in 2023 — have commented on the human toll of such relentless negativity.
Power-seeking politicians continue to self-promote, dominate the conversation, belittle council colleagues and undercut the work of political motherhood … not unlike how logging companies continue to fell the mother trees and old growth forests that are the lungs of our planet.
But you know what? Political motherhood is extraordinarily resilient precisely because it represents an interrelational model of life based on vibrant networks that empower complex ecosystems rather than single individuals.
While obviously not all women and mothers in politics embody the values of political motherhood, many do.
On its UN Women website, the United Nations states: “There is established and growing evidence that women’s leadership in political decision-making processes improves them. For example, research on panchayats (local councils) in India discovered that the number of drinking water projects in areas with women-led councils was 62 per cent higher than in those with men-led councils.”
We thank all of the mothers who bring this kind of change to politics: the world needs you.
The authors live in Colwood, Sooke and Metchosin, where they are active in environmental movements for climate justice, groundwater health, and the protection of old growth.
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