With the perennial push to boost the number of women in politics, it’s worth asking whether the world would be a more peaceful place with a bigger proportion of females at the helm. The only way to go beyond the theoretical in responding to such a question is to scrutinize the records of those women who’ve ruled. Women leaders, of course, are in the minority. But experience suggests a world of women presidents and prime ministers, queens and empresses would yield a world order not dissimilar to the one we have now.

Our May 5 edition of rabble takes on Ottawa webinar focused on grassroots critical thinking on the COVID-19 pandemic, centring on the experiences of workers and marginalized voices, and focused on the issues of the food chain and food security, as well as how the pandemic affects racialized and Indigenous communities in a disproportionate way. Hundreds of you tuned in. Today on Needs No Introduction, an encore presentation. The panel was moderated by Libby Davies, former federal NDP deputy leader and author of Outside In: a Political Memoir. Panelists were rabble.ca’s parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg, Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives senior economist David Macdonald, and executive director of Foodshare Toronto Paul Taylor.

The proposal to introduce a federal racial profiling ban isn't a new one. Former NDP MP Libby Davies tabled a private member's bill in 2004 to introduce the exact same thing. But the bill failed to pick up the support it needed from Paul Martin's Liberal government to become law.