In her book Women, Power, Politics: The Hidden Story of Canada's Unfinished Democracy, she explains that female politicians are far less likely to receive media coverage than their male counterparts. Moreover, in the cases where women manage to attract coverage, the media often tends to "[focus] on personal style and private life matters, rather than on public policy views." Here, the 2004 Conservative leadership election may serve as a case-study: as Bashevkin observes, the media mentioned Belinda Stronach's marital status "four times as often as they did that of fellow contender Stephen Harper." Furthermore, many desirable leadership qualities are commonly associated with masculinity. As a result, a female politician who displays these qualities may be seen as off-putting and unfeminine. Kim Campbell, for instance, has commented on the uneasy relationship between leadership and gender: "I was called arrogant, aggressive and lacking compassion," she stated in 1997, "I don't have a typically female pattern of speech. I'm open and assertive. In men, those traits are perceived as leadership material. In a woman, they are denigrated". Similarly, Sheila Copps and Sharon Carstairs have been accused of harshness and stridence, with Copps receiving the epithets of "baby", "slut" and "bitch" in Parliamentary discourse. Encouraging women's participation Because male and female politicians are judged according to disparate standards, Bashevkin has suggested that many women may be discouraged from entering politics in the first place. She writes, "Efforts to recruit more female candidates often fall short once the individuals being wooed start to think about what happened to the few courageous pioneers who preceded them." This might explain the general decrease of female representation in Canadian government in recent years—for instance, a major federal party has not had a female leader since Alexa McDonough resigned her post as head of the NDP in 2003. Political parties at both the federal and provincial levels have often faced difficulty in boosting the number of women prepared to stand as election candidates. This may be in part because women may be reluctant to run for parliament because of the adversity and combative nature of work. Political parties which take a strictly hands-off approach typically find themselves unable to put forward a slate of candidates that is more than 20 to 25 per cent female – but parties which implement more active strategies often risk being criticized as "anti-democratic" if their programs too closely resemble affirmative action. For example,