Senate was Muriel McQueen Fergusson, who served in the role from 1972 to 1974. In 1993, Joyce Fairbairn became the first female senator to be named Leader of the Government in the Senate. She held the role until 1997. Two more women have since had the role: Sharon Carstairs (2001–2003) and Marjory LeBreton (2006–2013). The Famous Five, a group of five women whose activism originally secured the right of women to be named to the Senate, were posthumously named as honorary senators in 2009. The women – Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby and Louise McKinney – are the only people in the history of the Senate to be given this honor. In November 2020, the Senate briefly reached gender parity, with 47 male and 47 female members. Provincial and territorial politics The first woman elected to a provincial legislature was Louise McKinney, who was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in 1917 to represent the electoral district of Claresholm. McKinney's victory was certified prior to the election of another woman, Roberta MacAdams, in the same election. MacAdams was elected to a special temporary seat allotted to soldiers and nurses serving in World War I. McKinney and MacAdams were the first two women elected in the British Commonwealth. MacAdams was the first woman in the British Empire to introduce a piece of legislation for debate. The first woman to serve as a provincial cabinet minister was Mary Ellen Smith, who was elected to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in 1918 and was appointed to the BC government cabinet in 1921. Irene Parlby (elected in the 1921 Alberta general election and Smith were the first two women in the entire British Empire to hold cabinet posts. Nancy Hodges became the first woman in both Canada and the Commonwealth of Nations to be elected as the Speaker of a legislature — although Smith had also previously served a short stint as Acting Speaker, and was similarly the first woman in both Canada and the British Empire to do so. Hilda Watson, who became the first leader of the newly formed Progressive Conservative Party in the Yukon, led her party to victory in the 1978 territorial election, the territory's first partisan legislative election – however, she was defeated in her own riding by another woman, Alice McGuire, and therefore did not become government leader. Smith and Stefanson are