Organizers Of The ‘Women for 50%’ Campaign Win International Award
SAINT JOHN – The group that organized the campaign to get more women to run for seats in the last New Brunswick provincial election received a North American Excellence Award at a ceremony Thursday night in Dublin, Ireland.
The Women for 50% group was the winner in the small-budget Campaign of the Year, alongside other category winners and industry giants like AT&T, IBM, Fujifilm, and American Express.
A panel of industry leaders judged the elements of the Women for 50% campaign and recognized the creative design and professional communications strength of three Saint John firms for their work over the last two years – GlassSKY, Janice Brown Design, and Innovatia.
The group was honoured by the global recognition of its work, said Roxanne Fairweather, Co-Chair of Women for 50% and Co-CEO of Innovatia.
“Women in politics is a topic that resonates broadly, and this award reinforces that we’ve got a valuable story to tell about our journey to create public awareness for women in politics in New Brunswick,” said Fairweather in a release. “We look forward to sharing our insights with groups in other geographies who are interested in getting more women elected to office. While our organization has made excellent progress, our work is not done.”
Women for 50% was launched in 2017 to address the lack of female representation in the provincial legislature – just 16 per cent elected female representatives in a province where women make up 50 per cent of the population.
The group had three objectives from the outset:
- To heighten public awareness about the lack of female representation in the legislature and the
benefits of greater gender diversity; - To offer education and support for women to learn about the political process and run; and,
- To begin to build a more sustainable infrastructure in the province for women to enter politics over the long term.
Ultimately, 11 women were elected in the September election, up from eight in 2014. Ninety-three women ran in the election, up from 71 in 2014, and the total votes cast for women candidates jumped 30 per cent to more than 114,000.
Norma Dubé, Executive Director of Women for 50%, said the election is over but the work of the group continues.
“The focus for Women for 50% will be determined largely by the input from the female candidates who ran,” she said. “We recently conducted a wide-ranging survey and are now in the process of analyzing the results. We’ll be listening closely to what has been said and will focus our energies in one or two very specific areas that emerge as critical to get more women into office.”
The North American Excellence Awards were created to honour the outstanding achievements of communications professionals in their field. The Awards are part of a global implementation of Excellence Awards also rolled out in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Europe.