Canada

Monday’s federal election saw a new record – the most female Members of Parliament elected to the House of Commons.

Global News counted a total of 98 women MPs that were elected across all parties, an increase of 10 from the 2015 election and seven from the 91 female-held seats at the time parliament dissolved.

Elected women also saw a general increase of representation in their respective parties.

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq, 25, was the youngest candidate running for federal MP in any of the three territories.

Early Tuesday morning, she became one of the youngest MPs in the country.

With 55 of 59 polls counted, the NDP candidate sat at 3,717 votes — nearly 1,000 more than her closest challenger, Liberal Megan Pizzo Lyall.

On October 11, the UBC Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions and UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) hosted a panel discussion on women’s representation in Canada.

With nearly a month until the 2019 Federal Election, politicians are upping their campaign efforts more than ever. However, while campaigning is hard work for anyone, female politicians and those with political experience say women face challenges before they're even nominated.

Men have greater confidence in their ability to serve as politicians and are more likely to have been personally encouraged to enter politics, a new poll shows, underscoring factors why women are under-represented at all levels of elected office in Canada.

One obstacle highlighted by the poll for the Environics Institute is the degree to which men and women see themselves as qualified to run for election and the amount of encouragement they get to throw their hat into the political ring.