Charlotte Whitten, when she was mayor of Ottawa, once said that to be a woman in politics in Canada, you had to do twice as well as a man to be considered half as good. 'Luckily, that is not difficult,' she said. Canada, for all its talk about gender equality, has always been ambivalent about women in politics, and Belinda Stronach is no exception. Ms Stronach, a wealthy, attractive and intelligent woman of 39, did something recently that is not uncommon in Canadian political life: she switched parties, from the Conservatives to the Liberals, over what she called an ideological difference. Her defection had an immediate effect on the balance of power in Ottawa, and Ms Stronach was given a cabinet post in the government as a reward - again, not the first time in the history of politics that someone in public life has acted in self-interest. But usually, the defectors are men. For her troubles, Ms Stronach was labelled a whore, a harlot and a 'dipstick', presumably because she is a striking blonde. The leader of the party she abandoned made a snide remark about her lack of 'complexity' - code for simple-minded. Much of this agitation has to do with the fact that strong, successful and ambitious women are a rare species in Canadian political life. Four-fifths of the members of parliament are men, as are all the party leaders, and the leaders of all the provinces. And women enter this testosterone tribe at their peril. It is more paternalism than misogyny. Canada's first woman MP, Ellen Fairclough, was elected in 1950, and promoted to the federal cabinet. Yet a big-city newspaper felt compelled to report that she 'travelled some 240,000 miles, mostly in Canada, and has worn more than three dozen hats'. Iona Campagnola, now the lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, is remembered not for her sharp political mind, but for the fact that a former Liberal leader patted her bottom in a 1984 campaign. Judy Lamarsh, a feisty cabinet minister in the 1960s, oversaw the introduction of Medicare, but she said in her memoirs that newspaper columnists only asked her about 'my home, my cooking, my hobbies, my friends, my tastes, my likes and dislikes'. Flora Macdonald had a stellar career as Canada's minister of external affairs, yet in her early years in parliament she was often asked by reporters: 'Are you a politician or a woman?' This is the world into which Ms Stronach is seeking admission. A recent poll showed that nine out of 10 Canadians want more women in political office. Half the population is women. You would think that changing the political culture would be as easy as voting. You would think so ...