Where are the women? As the ABC Nemesis series – about the period of Liberal power just gone – recalled, this time three years ago, a very female crisis engulfed the government.
In the #MeToo moment, all women had begun to reflect on their treatment by powerful or simply entitled men and many had discovered that experiences they thought they’d brushed off still burned. Time was being called on the casual sexual entitlement of men. A swirling feminist anger, locked up within during COVID lockdown, was ready to make change.
Brittany Higgins and Lisa Wilkinson outside Parliament House in March 2021.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Liberal women were angry that the party couldn’t seem to preselect them and recognise their contribution. Illiberal women were angry that Scott Morrison had won an election that was supposed to be in the bag for Labor. Then on February 15, 2021, former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins went to air with allegations that she had been raped in Parliament House and that her rape was hushed up for political reasons.
The interview channelled the anger of women over slights and humiliations, grabby bosses and sleazy peers, which they had for decades been told to brush aside. A couple of weeks later, ABC Four Corners screened Bursting the Canberra Bubble, a follow-up from a November show which pointed out sexual indiscretions in the capital but hinted at something more sinister by an unnamed minister. Bursting aired on International Women’s Day, after attorney-general Christian Porter, who had been accused of raping a girl when they were teenagers (which he vehemently denies) outed himself as the unnamed minister subject to serious allegations.
In the politically charged atmosphere, Melbourne “academic, designer, entrepreneur and mother” Janine Hendry wondered in a tweet about whether it would be possible to surround Parliament House with women linking arms. Her thought bubble took off. On March 15, the first parliamentary sitting day after International Women’s Day, 4000 women marched on Parliament House in the “March4Justice”. Brittany Higgins spoke at the event, supported by Lisa Wilkinson, who had broken the allegations on The Project.
Headlines announced that a “thunderous roar for change rings out across the nation” and “tidal wave of tears and rage sweeps the land”. Prime minister Scott Morrison, who had frankly always given a lot of women the icks, chose not to face the marching mob. His government, tested by fire and plague, and led by a man who never met a principle he liked better than a polling result, lost the female vote and would never recover.
March4Justice organiser Janine Hendry. “Her Twitter stream suggests she is still grumpy, but mainly at Coalition MPs.”Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
But where are the women now? Where is the feminism? Where is the March4Justice movement that swore it would not rest until ALL women were safe in Australia, gendered violence was ended and gender equality achieved?
Janine Hendry is, her Twitter stream suggests, still grumpy, but mainly at Coalition MPs. Her fire seems to have died out. Oh, and she hearts Prime Minister Albanese’s Hallmark-endorsed Valentine’s Day proposal to his girlfriend.
Wondering where the women’s March4Justice movement’s gone? Me too
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17.02.2024
Where are the women? As the ABC Nemesis series – about the period of Liberal power just gone – recalled, this time three years ago, a very female crisis engulfed the government.
In the #MeToo moment, all women had begun to reflect on their treatment by powerful or simply entitled men and many had discovered that experiences they thought they’d brushed off still burned. Time was being called on the casual sexual entitlement of men. A swirling feminist anger, locked up within during COVID lockdown, was ready to make change.
Brittany Higgins and Lisa Wilkinson outside Parliament House in March 2021.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Liberal women were angry that the party couldn’t seem to preselect them and recognise their contribution. Illiberal women were angry that Scott Morrison had won an election that was supposed........
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