In the first pledge of the campaign that addresses gender equality at city hall, Jennifer Keesmaat promised that if elected mayor she will require that women fill half of all city board and senior staff positions.

City hall will lead by example, she told reporters Friday outside Old City Hall, where a dozen women stood behind her.

“We can take concrete steps as a city to build a fairer government for everyone and that starts with the people doing the day-to-day work that keeps our city moving forward,” Keesmaat said. “If women don’t have a role in deciding what happens in our city, women themselves will not matter in our city.”

Of the 56 senior staff, including the city manager and divisional managers and directors, about 21 or 38 per cent are women, according to the city’s website.

Roughly 30 per cent of Council-appointed city board members are women, said a city staff report in 2016. Keesmaat promised to increase that to 50 per cent in the next four years.

“I believe we owe it to all residents to make sure they have an equal voice,” she said, noting Toronto’s population is 52 per cent female.

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Keesmaat is also committed to “gender responsive budgeting,” which means council considers the gender impacts of future city budgets.

In this past term of council 14 of the 44 city councillors were women. Now with 25 wards, Keesmaat said “many would-be first-time women candidates have dropped off the ballot entirely” and there may not be enough elected women to form a gender-equal executive committee with 12 councillors appointed by the mayor.

If female incumbents win all nine wards they’re running in, and female candidates win the two races without incumbents, women will represent 11 wards, or 44 per cent of council.

Twelve female councillors are running for re-election, but Paula Fletcher and Mary Fragadakis, and Lucy Troisi and Kristyn Wong-Tam, are running against one another. Only three female incumbents are not running against a male incumbent — Ana Bailao, Christin Carmichael Greb and Shelley Carroll (who resigned her position on council this spring for an unsuccessful run for MPP).

In the two open ward races, seven of the 27 candidates are women. In one of those races, Beaches-East York, Mayor John Tory has endorsed Brad Bradford.

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“If re-elected, John Tory will continue to make sure women are well-represented in senior leadership roles at City Hall and that across Toronto the voices of women are being heard,” said campaign spokesperson Keerthana Kamalavasan.

More women than men were hired or promoted in senior leadership positions during Tory’s time as mayor, Kamalavasan said.

While Tory publicly voted to support a gender equality approach to city budgeting in 2017, his office instructed other councillors to vote against it, the Star reported, and Keesmaat made mention of that Friday. The motion asking staff to develop a gender-based framework passed, but many of his allies voted against it.

Keesmaat Friday called Tory’s vote an “empty gesture.”

“And as women, we’ve seen enough of those,” she said.

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