How Vancouver-based Beyond a Ballot is encouraging women to get involved in politics

When I planned to interview Rachael Segal and locked in the date, I didn’t know that we’d end up talking a day after the party that she’s a long-time director of, BC United, would announce that it was folding and would not be running candidates in the election that was less than two months away.

Segal, who has been on maternity leave from her role with the party for around four years, was unsure of where things stood with BC United but that it was “an exciting time in B.C. politics… the question will really be if [the BC Conservative Party] can do what right-of-centre parties have done in this province for generations and unite a broad tent of people.” She also added that there are “a lot of questions that need to be answered.”

Keeping track of all that—and everything that’s happened since then in the run-up to the provincial election—hasn’t been easy for Segal, who, in addition to being a mother to two young girls, is also a regular columnist on CBC’s Power & Politics show.

If it’s tough for her, imagine what it’s like for someone without her political acumen. That was part of the thought process that led Segal to start Beyond a Ballot a year ago. The idea had been in her head since she was on maternity leave with her first daughter a few years ago.

“Being on leave from a political party, I felt so disengaged with politics,” she remembers. “And I just felt that it must be how women who don’t work in politics feel all the time. So, how can we start producing products that would make politics easier to engage with for people that have no time to engage with it?”

Segal and CTV’s Vassy Kapelos were on maternity leave at the same time and started brainstorming about building a brand that focused on women engagement in politics. Fellow political commentator Amanda Alvaro joined as well.

A year after launching, Beyond a Ballot, which doesn’t align itself with any particular political party or ideology, offers a book club, a weekly newsletter and a podcast (sponsored by DoorDash) hosted by Segal and Alvaro that has featured political leaders of all stripes, including former prime minister Kim Campbell and North Vancouver-Lonsdale MLA Bowinn Ma.

Last month, the company hosted its first live event in Vancouver with the goal of bringing together women to discuss political issues and get them more involved in the political space. It sold out immediately. “Holy moly, we underestimated the demand for that,” Segal says of the gathering at OneSpace in East Vancouver. “It was a test to move people into a physical space.”

She hopes to host one in Victoria before the B.C. election on October 19 and is looking at doing events in both Saskatchewan and Ontario prior to the next provincial contests in those areas.

“It just reiterates that this is a massive hole in the Canadian market that nobody is talking to women about politics this way,” says Segal. “More than ever, this is needed, especially in this current climate. I have two young girls and I want them to have their voice be heard. Young women harnessing power in the political arena is so important.”