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Amid the media hype surrounding Hillary Clinton’s crusade to
‘change America’ as its first female president you could be excused for
thinking women in politics is a novel idea.
Environmental and human rights campaigner NSW Greens Senator Kerry
Nettle.
Let’s be real. The world has had female leaders and
Australia has had hard women in government. Amanda Vanstone, Bronwyn Bishop,
and now Julia Gillard, working across areas such as immigration, education,
employment, defence and science – portfolios traditionally assigned to men.
But how do women fare in politics when it is so masculinised?
In her new book, Women, Power and
Politics, Anne Stevens examines women making their way in a man’s world.
She takes the interesting view of female politicians as maternal creatures,
popularly portrayed as “Less aggressive and combative. Conscientious. Honest
and less corrupt.”
Women can improve the community at large when they hold
senior positions in governments and can access policy-making institutions to do
plenty. But environmental and human rights campaigner NSW Greens Senator, Kerry
Nettle resists the ‘mother and apple pie’ recipe for political success. In her
early days of activism, she played a Maverick role against plans to build a new
women’s prison in western Sydney.
“We were saying if you spent that same money on social
welfare services in disadvantaged suburbs you could actually reduce crime,” Nettle
asserts. “I realised politics was a means towards achieving an end, rather an
end itself and to achieve anything you had to be involved with the people who
were making the decisions.”
Trans woman
Georgina Beyer talks freely about her move from prostitution and stripping to
life in the political arena as an elected member of the New Zealand parliament.
“Most of my life was survival with street life, then I entered politics
in my adult years because the community meant something to me. I enjoy my sexuality
and I’ve never felt inferior to anyone. Had I emanated that, they would have
gobbled me up.”
As the Member for Wairarapa in New Zealand, Beyer talked up
women’s issues. A strong supporter for the Prostitution
Reform Act in 2003, she played a vital role in the decriminalisation of
prostitution, triggering a wave of controversy across New Zealand and abroad.
Now retired, Beyer says the sex trade was a revelation that was startling for
some and sobering for others.
“Many accused me of promoting the abuse of women,” she says.
“A Scottish politician phoned asking, ‘How could you let this happen?’ There
was no point banging on the moral drum – prostitution was going to happen,
whether people wanted it to or not.”
While Nettle and Beyer paved their political careers with
good intentions and fashioned academic thinking, many feminists believe (as
Stevens does in her book) the ‘fragmentation’ of women’s liberation has
derailed women’s interests.
As an originator of ‘women in politics’ and vocal
participant in the Women’s Electoral Lobby of Australia, Eva Cox believes
women’s interests are in some ways going backwards. “Women think it’s up to
them individually to deal with problems and it’s not something to put on the
political agenda and join force with others to change,” she argues. “This is a
serious problem facing women today. Women don’t like conflict but if you don’t
create conflict, nothing moves. The culture of politics is very much based on
head kicking and women get caught in the dilemma – if you are a head kicker
you’ll get done over and if you’re not, you won’t get there. Those who succeed
do so because they’re not a threat to the status quo. Governments are very good
at making sure they preserve themselves and will never put a woman who wants to
make changes into senior positions; when they do, they get torn apart like
Carmen Lawrence [the first woman to become Premier of an Australian state].”
Cox says politics has a double bind for women creating
change. After all, they are ‘soft’ as women and when they fall literally and
metaphorically, it’s scrutinised in a way a man’s actions never are. “Other
women are just wimps and have this ‘I can’t cope with that’ attitude and they
don’t change things.”
On the topic of Hillary Clinton as a Democrat candidate, Cox
questions how Clinton would handle presidency. “If I were an American I would
probably vote for Obama and not because he’s black, but because I think Clinton
is flakey,” she says.
There is no doubt that ‘women in politics’ is a matter of
public interest. Australian women make up more than 50% of the population, but
are still under-represented in government. But if you saddled up next to women
like Nettle, Beyer and Cox, they would tell you governments need more women who
are able to think beyond the square.
“You actually find swings in women’s movements and I get the
impression talking to younger women, there might more of a sense of getting
back to group-focused politics coming up in the future,” Cox says.
Let’s hope the next swing is coming soon.
Women, Power & Politics by Anne Stevens is published by
Palgrave MacMillan.
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