Just 16 percent of mayors and 26 percent of city councillors across Canada are women, according to former COPE councillor Ellen Woodsworth.

That statistic is cited in the group Women Transforming Cities’ Hot Pink Paper Campaign, which focuses on 11 issues, including childcare, housing, and violence against women.

“Those statistics haven’t changed much, so people are starting to realize that there needs to be a proactive movement around making cities work for women and girls, and getting women into positions of elected office,” Woodsworth told the Straight by phone.

Some of the policies that the group asked Vancouver candidates and parties to commit to as part of its campaign include transit improvements for women, such as making the city a free transit zone after dark, expanding public transit services, and providing safe transportation to all workers at times when there is no public transportation.

“We’ve gotten people thinking about what does transit look like for women at night,” said Woodsworth. “The bus drivers’ union said that 80 per cent of ridership are women, and young women are getting out of the bars that they’re working at, and older immigrant women are coming off a shift cleaning buildings, and they can’t get transit and that’s a very serious issue.”

The organization also asked candidates to support electoral reform measures, including establishing a ward system, and running at least 50 percent women candidates. It also wants to see a young women’s committee established to address gender-specific barriers to leadership, and the municipal voting age lowered to 16—an idea that Woodsworth said was received with “mixed support” from parties.

“It sounds like Vision is interested in supporting something like that, and obviously the youth are very concerned,” she said. “They’re going out and working on campaigns, but they’re not able to vote, so I think that it’s something that there was mixed response about, but we got it on the table, and certainly the young people are very committed to continuing to pursue that, and we’ll support them.”

Other policies outlined in the Hot Pink Paper include making the city a living wage employer, working with communities to promote the $10-per-day child-care plan, making Vancouver a Sanctuary City for all women and girls regardless of immigration status, and developing a strategy that addresses the housing and homeless circumstances of women and girls, such as vulnerability to violence.

The group also advocated for parties and candidates to develop a comprehensive civic action plan to combat violence against women and girls, and to “create and use an equity/intersectional lens framework for policy development and evaluation”.

The stances of Vancouver parties and candidates on the policies put forward in the Hot Pink Paper Campaign are outlined in an online report card.

"We’ve been using social media to tell people to go to our website and to use that information as a basis for making a decision on who to vote for," said Woodsworth.

Parties that gave their full support to the Hot Pink Paper are OneCity, the Public Education Project, the Cedar Party, COPE, and IDEA. The Green Party of Vancouver indicated its full support of most of the issues, while Vision Vancouver expressed full or partial support of most of the categories, and the NPA responded with full support for five of the issues, according to the report card.

Out of the city’s mayoral candidates, COPE’s Meena Wong fully supports the issues in the Hot Pink Paper, while COPE council candidates, Green council candidate Cleta Brown, OneCity candidate RJ Aquino, IDEA candidate Rick Orser, and the Cedar Party’s candidates offered full support for the paper.

Representatives from all parties agreed at an all-women candidates debate to implement a comprehensive violence against women and girls action plan.

Woodsworth believes the campaign has been successful in raising awareness of the issues. She noted there has been a lot of response to the initiative on social media.

“It’s been a real shift,” she said.

She added that Women Transforming Cities is part of a national coalition of five cities working on an “equity inclusion how-to guide for municipalities”, which is expected to launch next spring.

“We’re taking what we learned, and we’re putting that into the how-to guide as well, so it’s going to be useful,” she said. “Not just for changing the discourse and practice in Vancouver, but also helping us change it across the country.”