… ten being the number of seats out of 45 on Toronto City Council that are occupied by women. If you think about it, that paltry showing for a gender that makes up half the population in a city that likes to boast how cosmopolitan it is, is both astonishing and frankly pathetic.

It bears consideration these days, particularly as south of the border the gender of a vice-presidential candidate has become such an important political commodity. But also because on Wednesday, Mayor David Miller and those 10 councillors will be launching the Toronto Regional Champion Campaign: Increasing Women’s Potential in Municipal Government.

We’ll find out more then, but so far, the campaign looks like a mentorship arrangement, that will see the women on Toronto Council and in other municipal governments help young women looking at a municipal political career develop the knowledge, skills and contacts they’ll need to take it a step further and actually run for office.

(From the evidence thus far,  it looks as though the Americans could use a similar program for bringing their vice-presidential candidates up to snuff.)

It’s an interesting problem in municipal politics. Torontonians and our neighbours in the 905 have been ably represented by numerous (and impressive) women for many years:  in Mississauga and from the beginning of time, Mayor Hazel McCallion; in the old City of Toronto,  Mayor Barbara Hall and before her  June Rowlands;  inVaughan, the currently-embattled Mayor Linda Jackson. And on Toronto Council some of the city’s highest-profile councillors are women: the current budget chief, Shelley Carroll; Karen Stintz, an opposition councillor whose name is regularly touted as a mayoral candidate; and Frances Nunziata was a mayor in the former City of York before she became a Toronto Councillor.

So it’s not that it’s impossible for a woman to rise in elected municipal government. Rather, it’s that much more difficult.

Paula Fletcher, the Ward 30 councillor who chairs the city’s Parks and Environment Committee from a seat on David Miller’s Executive Committee, speculates that one reason for this is that women still don’t have as many opportunities to raise their profile in communities as men do.

“It’s about how you are able to become known in the community,” said Fletcher. “It’s the Rotary Clubs and it’s the hockey team it’s all those things that people use to find their way forward - particularly in municipal politics. Major parties can say we have to have a certain number of women candidates on the slate, and they can do that. But at the municipal level it’s harder. So many of the women on council come from the school boards. Because we’ve worked in the community and become well-known as community advocates.”

You know, you look at this and you think: there’s nothing barring women in this day and age from belonging to a Rotary Club - and if you think about it, U.S. Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin has made much of her hockey-mom background.  So even based on Fletcher’s analysis, it shouldn’t be a problem for more women to take a place on Toronto Council.

And yet … there are only 10 just now.

Any way you look at it, something’s broke.  Still.