Unlike most of the people joining government as brand-new staff, I was coming of age. For a young woman, growing up in politics had little to do with the number of years you were involved as a volunteer or a staff person. It was about the struggle to advance beyond the glass ceiling, and it wasn’t easy. In a male-dominated profession, well before the #metoo movement, there was intense pressure on women both in the office and on the social scene. Young people made up the largest group of staff; most were unmarried, and many had moved to Toronto from smaller communities, as I had. There was a lot of pressure to party and accept you were going to be hit on at political events. You were called “Girl Friday,” “sweetheart,” “little girl,” and there was an assumption you’d be the one to get the coffee.
More often than not, you were the only woman in a room of men in charge. Even if there were a few women, you were always outnumbered by the men. It was a challenge to be heard. You first had to believe you had something important to say. Then you had to find the courage to say it. You were just as likely to be ignored because of your gender than be heard because you knew your stuff. I realized the only way to gain ground was to fight to be recognized, and then push aside the tendency to be intimidated by the reaction to simply speaking up.
When I started to chair meetings later in my career, I would consciously recall that early lesson. I would look around the room at who was not speaking, trying to gauge how they felt by their facial expressions. Sometimes it was frustration at not getting a word in. That was easy to solve by inviting them to speak. If I saw discomfort or confusion, I would take a less direct approach by speaking to the issue and inviting the person to comment. Sometimes if I broke the ice by raising the other side of the debate, I would give the individual, almost always a woman, a chance to find her voice.
Lesson: You are not a girl, you are a woman. In the professional world, don’t be defined by terms that diminish you.
Male staff, as well as my nephews and male friends, used to grumble about how I regularly corrected them when I heard them use the term “girls.” I’d suggest they meant “women” or “young women.” In some cases, tongue in cheek, I’d hear the word “girl” and ask how old the person was to whom they referred. Sometimes people would catch on right away and others would give me a straight answer. I would quickly point out that if she is over seventeen, she is not a girl.
Although aware of all the reasons it’s deemed okay to call women “girls” (arguments like that’s how women refer to themselves, it’s meant as a friendly term, it’s the norm today), I don’t buy any of them. It’s long been my position that in the professional world women must not refer to themselves as girls, nor should they make it okay for others to do so. The term is a reference to someone junior, or someone who isn’t equal to others in the room. It’s is a throwback to a day when you accepted whatever a man wanted to call you, which served to minimize your authority and maturity.
Lesson: Treat politics like a job, not a social activity. Be a professional and do the work. Get recognized by achieving outcomes, not by being a regular at the local political hangout.
As a woman making my way in politics, I pretty much put everything on the line. I knew the only way I was going to make it was to work harder and longer than everybody else. It also meant taking my disappointments in stride and accepting being passed over—something that happened many times. It meant that I’d stay the course and accept certain roles when I knew I was more qualified than the men given a more senior position. And often, I would end up doing the work of the man given that position, only to watch him take the credit.
I now tell young staff that it’s about how you choose to get noticed. You can get a job as a political staffer and think the way upward is paved by attending parties and events, earning a reputation as someone who is fun to socialize with. You can hang out with politicians and senior staffers, hoping they’ll remember your name the next time they see you in the hallways, or you can approach being a political staff the same way you would approach any other career: you need to make a difference. That means taking on responsibility, doing the absolute best job you can, being accountable and getting results. On that path—inevitably the lonelier one—you’ll be surprised how many people will know your name.
When I started in politics, advancement was often associated with who you knew. Nepotism plays a role when politics is the family business. It dictated who got the job or the assignment and it assumed you’d perform well. What was not always clear was how closely performance was linked to popularity within the political network, which often kept a staff person in their job even if they were failing at it.
When I worked as chief of staff to minister Laurel Broten in the government of Dalton McGuinty, it was not uncommon for the Centre to assign young staff to work with me because of my expectation that they would meet performance requirements regardless of who they knew. Even if you were the son of a former MPP or labour leader, you were required to show up at work on time and do your job well. My goal was to make sure those young people came to understand their value as individuals, regardless of how they got their positions. It was said that anyone who survived their training with me could move on and do well. And they did.
I’d been in Ontario Liberal politics for about seven years prior to the arrival of the much more famous Sorbara—Greg—and his appearance on the scene brought some tension to my career. People would learn my name and ask immediately about my relationship to the finance minister (something that still happens today). Some clearly assumed I got to Queen’s Park because I was related to Greg, and while it is true that he is my second cousin, we only met when I helped recruit him to run in 1985. In response to the unspoken question, I would say to people, “If you are making an assumption that my being here is somehow related to Greg, I was here first and I got him the job.” Other times people would assume my relationship status with Greg. After I’d grown tired of it, conversations would go like this:
“I know your husband.”
“I don’t have a husband.”
“Oh. Then your brother.”
“Nope, I don’t have a brother.”
“Oh, I’m talking about Greg.”
“Oh, you mean my father?”
“Your father??”
“Yes. Next time you talk with him, please tell him his daughter Pat says hi.”
From time to time, the phone would ring and it would be Greg, who is exactly ten years older than me. He’d say, “Please stop telling people you’re my daughter!” We’d laugh and I’d whine about the assumption that he was the reason I’d moved my way up the ladder.
Lesson: In politics, you end up with a reputation whether you want one or not. Make sure it’s one you can live with and stand behind.
By the mid-1980s, within the inside circles of the party, my reputation as skilled, hard-driving and demanding had taken hold. And that’s exactly what I was. By working on many elections and key party events, I had demonstrated my ability to lead teams and get results. When I was at the Centre, I was often the one on the other end of phone providing direction (whether it was wanted or not), giving advice (whether it was wanted or not) or chasing down political leads before they become problems.
I wasn’t always happy with my reputation because, on many days, it felt more negative than positive. My only way to change that, I felt, was to settle for less from myself and others. And that just wasn’t in my DNA. It often depended on the person expressing their views. Some were receptive and thrived under my coaching; others struggled and pushed back. I was willing to work with anyone who felt they could withstand my approach to leadership and my view that failure because you did not try was not an option. It was a running joke that anyone who worked with me on a by-election should earn a T-shirt with the words, “I survived a by-election with Pat Sorbara.”
Eventually I learned that regardless of how I felt about it, my reputation was a fair reflection of the way I operated. The results