I absolutely adore the Liberal Party. Any chance to get a go, they have a go. It was not that long ago that the former prime minister Scott Morrison told us, Australian women, that we were lucky to be able to demonstrate in this country without being shot at. Not so lucky in terms of all other forms of violence but that's a story for another day.
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Not only can women avoid being shot at on the streets just for speaking their mind, they can also avoid getting preselected by the Liberal Party. And if they do get preselected, by some miracle, they can avoid getting higher responsibilities. Lucky them. I joke.
This week, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published a list of companies with more than 100 employees and the results were wild. Apparently women don't want to work in high-powered jobs, construction or banking. Now I've done my best to find the gender pay gaps for either the Liberal Party or the Labor Party (not the politicians but the organisational arms) but they haven't made the list. It's probably to do with the deliberate chaos of having smaller state organisations so they never get to the 100 employees needed to make the WGEA list. Right now, at least in NSW, the Liberals have a male president, Jason Falinski, and as far as I can hear, the only names being touted to replace him are men. In Victoria, it's also a bloke. Also in Queensland. The Australian Labor Party has 16 officials in the national and state offices, of whom seven are women. So let's see what's happening with the Liberal Party's political arm.
Sure, there's been an improvement since Tony Abbott had one woman in cabinet, just one woman, and instead appointed himself minister for women. If you look at the shadow ministry these days, about 40 per cent are women. Still that gives us a glimpse of the power and gender pay gap. When the Coalition was in actual power, it was about 30 per cent women. The Labor Party is better at this but we'll get to that in a minute.
And at the moment in time, the Liberal Party is in the unique position of having one of their own running the biggest gender equality campaign in Australia. Meet Mary Wooldridge, chief executive office of WGEA.
Now let me be clear. As WGEA CEO, Wooldridge is a public servant and they don't align themselves with party politics unless they are the dearly departed Mike Pezzullo. But Wooldridge was once a valued member of the Victorian Liberal Party, former member of the Victorian Legislative Council, former minister in the Victorian government. She knows the Liberal ropes but has an equality mindset.
I felt slightly reprimanded when I asked her last week about the political party to which she committed so much of her life. More or less along the lines of "hmph, you know I'm a public servant, right?"
But then Wooldridge relented slightly.
"I worked quite hard to support the preselection and election of more women," she said. "We needed to take a much more serious approach in relation to delivering different outcomes."
And that is still work to be done for the Liberal Party. Others have take up Wooldridge's work, Charlotte Mortlock, executive director of Hilma's Network, says there needs to be a multi-prong approach to female representation within the party.
"We are focused on recruiting women at a grassroots level to diversify our membership, and we are also doing everything we can to support and promote women into Parliament," she says.
"These two prongs are actually closely related because it's much easier to attract and recruit women to the membership when we can exemplify that we are a party that promotes women at a leadership level."
Which brings me to the next puzzle. Why is it that the Liberal Party undermines women in seats they currently hold. Let me draw your attention to Melissa McIntosh, federal member for Lindsay. Two-term member. Increased the swing to Liberals by 1.3 per cent in her Western Sydney seat when most other seats in the 2022 election were on a spectrum from turquoise to red-hot. She now holds that seat with 56 per cent of the vote. She is being challenged for preselection by a bloke. Not that there's anything wrong with that but the Liberal Party so often goes for a man who doesn't have the credentials instead of a woman who does.
Wooldridge says it can be tough having conversations with those in power who have not grappled with the problem of inequality and haven't had to confront it. They've grown up with stereotypes and no understanding of the impact of power dynamics, she says.
Here is the problem for the Liberal Party. It's not the Labor Party. It is not only that it is losing touch with women, as evidenced in the results of the 2022 election, it's also that it doesn't understand why that matters and how it might address the problem.
The best way is for the Liberal Party to take the advice of Labor minister Katy Gallagher, the minister for women. In the WGEA data, it clearly showed that women-led organisations had a lower gender pay gap. At a press conference to launch the WGEA data on Tuesday Gallagher was asked if companies should follow the lead of the Labor Party and impose quotas.
What a gift of a question.
She said: "Well, I'm a big believer in quotas. And I think the evidence is very clear. Where you have them, they deliver. And you know, there's a classic example right here in this Parliament between the Labor and Liberal parties on that front."
Sadly she decided not to impose quotas on businesses across Australia (too much of an overreach) but the Liberal Party could certainly take her advice.
As Wooldridge herself said at the launch, we need pipelines. And that's not only in construction.
Jenna Price is a Canberra Times columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Jenna Price is a Canberra Times columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Sure, things are better than the Abbott days. But they're not exactly good
11
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29.02.2024
I absolutely adore the Liberal Party. Any chance to get a go, they have a go. It was not that long ago that the former prime minister Scott Morrison told us, Australian women, that we were lucky to be able to demonstrate in this country without being shot at. Not so lucky in terms of all other forms of violence but that's a story for another day.
$0/
(min cost $0)
Login or signup to continue reading
Not only can women avoid being shot at on the streets just for speaking their mind, they can also avoid getting preselected by the Liberal Party. And if they do get preselected, by some miracle, they can avoid getting higher responsibilities. Lucky them. I joke.
This week, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published a list of companies with more than 100 employees and the results were wild. Apparently women don't want to work in high-powered jobs, construction or banking. Now I've done my best to find the gender pay gaps for either the Liberal Party or the Labor Party (not the politicians but the organisational arms) but they haven't made the list. It's probably to do with the deliberate chaos of having smaller state organisations so they never get to the 100 employees needed to make the WGEA list. Right now, at least in NSW, the Liberals have a male president, Jason Falinski, and as far as I can hear, the only names being touted to replace him are men. In Victoria, it's also a bloke. Also in Queensland. The Australian Labor Party has 16 officials in the........
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