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There are no men in Canada.

Justin Trudeau promised in June that half his cabinet would be
female if he was elected Canada’s prime minister. Today he gets
the job, the women -- and the bruised egos of some experienced
men who won’t make it to the top tier of government.

Trudeau, 43, will be sworn in and announce appointments to about
30 cabinet portfolios from finance to foreign affairs to
fisheries. Among his ministers, normally chosen from members of
parliament, could be former journalist Chrystia Freeland, 47, co-
chair of his economic council; Melanie Joly, a 36-year-old
lawyer and former candidate for mayor of Montreal; and Jody
Wilson-Raybould, 44, an aboriginal lawyer from British Columbia.

“It’s a message to Canadian women -- and young women in
particular -- that this world is about you,” said Jean Charest,
the former premier of Quebec who put women in half his
provincial ministries in 2007. “You have to move beyond the old
boy’s network.”

Trudeau’s ‘parity cabinet’ is a first in a country where women
started voting in 1916, four years before similar rights in the
U.S. It ends a centuries-old habit by leaders of large English-
speaking countries, including the U.K. and U.S., to name men to
a large majority of government posts. France, Italy and the
Nordic countries already have had parity cabinets. Canada has
been slower than others to elect women, ranking No. 50 last year
in women’s government representation on the International
Parliamentary Union’s list of 190 countries, down from 17th in
1997.

For Trudeau, a self-declared feminist who won a majority
government last month in part by saying he’d bring new voices to
Ottawa, selecting a 50-50 cabinet isn’t so simple. First off,
he’s choosing from among 134 men and 50 women Liberals MPs, so
some long-standing male legislators will be left out. As well,
the new gender division comes on top of existing cabinet-making
criteria for regional, linguistic and ethnic representation,
including the practice of selecting at least one minister from
each of the country’s 10 provinces.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-04/feminist- trudeau-to-name-women-to-half-the-posts-in-new-cabinet
 

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