Prime Minister John Howard appointed a new minister today, to replace Senator Ian Campbell who resigned at the weekend. This was a perfect opportunity to improve on the numbers of women in his ministry, to at least restore them to the January 2007 level of 5 women (before Senator Amanda Vanstone was dumped). But sadly this did not happen. Mr Howard appointed another bloke, ensuring that Australia’s representation of women in political leadership remains among the lowest in the world.
See “Time to make the shoe fit” on my home page for the shamfeul statistics on how Australia ranks when it comes to women in poilitical leadership.
What are your thoughts on Kevin Rudd, and particularly Julia Gillard? Is she a future leader? Is she a stronger leadership candidate than Jenny Macklin?
Julia Gillard has already declared that she would like to put herself forward as the leader of the ALP. The obstacles she faces are (1) she is a member of the Left faction and ALP leaders have never been drawn from this faction, and (2) Kevin Rudd is likely to be in the job for the foreseable future. If he wins the election later this year, and thus takes his party back to power after eleven years in the political widlerness, he could be Prime Minister for a long time. He could even equal Bob Hawke’s record of being PM for nine years.
On a similar theme, there seems to be quite a bit of speculation that Prue Goward could slide into the Liberal Party leadership following the likely demise of Peter Debnam.
Its obviously premature, given that she hasnt even won her seat yet, but Im wondering what your take is on the enthusiasm for this move. Given the general the NSW Libs are in, is the Goward push more about them being desperate for any leader with a bit of charisma, or is this a recognition that its time to leave the boys club behind?
I have just finished reading your book “Ducks on the Pond” and I was heartened to realise just how far we have come in terms of gender equality — certainly a lot of things have changed in the last 50 years! But it is sad that gender equality falls down in such a crucial area as politics.
In your book you wrote of the efforts (in the 70s I think) to make politicians aware of the importance of the female vote, however in that regard it doesn’t seem like much has changed – I can’t believe that we are still struggling to get maternity leave and child care issues on the table!
I believe our political arena should reflect the kind of Australia we are working towards, but instead it seems to reflect all the things we don’t want for our society. After all of these years and with so few female politicians, the system is obviously broke. Maybe it isn’t just a problem of political parties and the media not supporting women, but perhaps the whole federal political system doesn’t support women. I am curious to learn how our political system differs to Spain, Norway and Chile etc.
Unfortunately in a system skewed towards men and run by men, I can’t see the motivation for change. Maybe your book should be required reading for women, to encourage us not to give up the fight – we have come so far but there is obviously still a ways to go.