Educación y política: actos inseparables

WOMEN IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS: Why have women been discriminated against/marginalised?

PART 1

Section A: AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL RIGHTS

Early Colonial Women

Early in the last century, Australian women ‘enjoyed an international reputation as pioneer(s) of women’s rights…Much of Australia’s pioneering social legislation was attributed to the effects of women’s suffrage’ yet, it was 41 years before women were

actually elected to the national Parliament (Sawer and Simms 1993: 1). Kirsten Lees observes that few people know much about the ‘votes for women story in Australia’. Wo`men did not always reap the benefits of their great achievements and over time the recordsdisappeared. Or was it because, at that period in history, men were in the position to

shape the historical records and the struggle for women’s rights did not have significance in Australia? (Lees 1995: xii). Indeed, Clarke and White agree and state that little was known about the political interests of colonial women, although it was understood that their interests revolved around their family, friends, charity work and the church (Clarke and White 1983:

16). By contrast, it is now argued that differing accounts have been surfacing in recent years, enabling researchers and historians to analyse how Australian women have fought to

overcome subordination and are still fighting to gain leadership roles in the ALP and the Victorian Branch.

A number of historians, including Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly in Creating a Nation, have challenged earlier histories of Australia from a

feminist perspective. Patricia Grimshaw writes that in Australia in the Nineteenth Century it was considered inappropriate for women to fight for their rights. Their place had been firmly established because they were expected to perform duties for their men, preferably in the

home (Grimshaw 1994: 107). In addition, Marilyn Lake shows that women were expected to devote their lives to the breeding of a supposedly stronger and healthier race. She says that women worked for an improved status within the home and also with difficulty against that which men expected them to be – that is the potential, propagating figure of mother (Lake

1994: 208).

Most men, Marian Quartly points out, were adamant that males were so different from women that they assumed any arguments about the rights of men did not apply to women. She says men could earn their residency status simply by developing their economic status.

Women were apparently different and unable to do this. Quartly mentions a meeting in 1853 at which tradesmen and businessmen met in a Mechanics Institute in Perth and discussed for three nights ‘whether women do or would possess the same amount of intellect as men if they had the same advantage’. They decided that they did not and would not (Grimshaw, Lake, McGrath and Quartly 1994: 102):

The debaters believed that women’s lack of intelligence justified men’s rule over women in public and in private: [women are incapable of equaling the man and taking the rules of Government into their own hands, and of ruling over the men domestically or otherwise] (Grimshaw et al.1994: 102).

Consequently, if women were not seen as being capable of matching men in political knowledge, then it must be concluded that politics is basically masculine and one requires a male form to engage in political affairs. Thus democracy must be based on a bodily requisite rather than on intellectual and vocational capacities.

However, we do know that, in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and the first of the Twentieth, some middle class colonial women emerged to take part in women’s semi- political or political groups (Grimshaw et al.1994: 102). (Details of women’s non-party

activism will appear below.)

Period of Optimism

In the late 1800s in the colonies, a generally optimistic view was felt about the advancement of political achievements for women. In fact, Henry Champion claimed that: ‘No one can

doubt that the postponement of the time when women will wield great political power over all Australasia is only a matter of months’ (Champion, Cosmos 1895). Louisa Lawson later wrote in her feminist-republican journal, Dawn, ‘we have statesmen vieing [sic] with each

other in their efforts to place women on terms of political equality with themselves’. By comparison with ‘their sisters at the beginning of this century’, present day women had won considerable gains. Indeed, she continued, they were destined to contribute a role of importance in ‘the great and prosperous nation’ (Lawson, Dawn, 1900).

Champion and Dawson were overly optimistic. The basic fact is that their assumptions were

true to a point given that some women were highly active in temperance and social and political reform. Australian women in the first half of the 1900s did gain political voice; they did raise these issues in order to justify their arguments for women’s suffrage. However, this does not mean that their aims were achieved. It simply means that they were heard. In the

Twentieth-First Century, there is evidence that women, having gained Affirmative Action are now gaining entry to the ALP and the Victorian Branch in greater numbers. But the question is, are they being heard?

Suffrage

Women’s first ‘sustained’ participation in Australian politics dates from the suffrage

campaigns in the colonies from the late 1880s. South Australia was the first to grant female suffrage in 1894 and Victoria was the last in 1908. Yet, some historical accounts of the female suffrage ‘campaigns’ in Australia relate the ‘ease’ with which women gained suffrage ‘compared with Britain and the United States’ (Lees 1995: xiii). However, it is wise to

remember that, contrary to such historical versions of the franchise, women’s suffrage was sought vigorously. Pateman argues that resistance to political rights for women was ‘much stronger, longer lived, and ran much deeper than resistance to manhood suffrage’. Interestingly, manhood suffrage was observed as a challenge to private property while ‘universal suffrage’

was recognised as a challenge to the ‘sexual order itself’ (Pateman 1980a: 567).

Clarke and White agree that recent research claims that women did ‘organise extensively to campaign for women’s suffrage and that they created a unique political force’. They say that this was a unique period and the only period when women ‘united across class lines for any

length of time’ (Clarke and White 1983: 18). Indeed, working class, middle class and upper class women campaigned ‘side by side’ to lobby Governments to grant the vote to women. Clarke and White state that in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and in the early Twentieth Century the ‘success of the suffrage movement’ was partly due to the lack of

obvious party divisions in the colonies of Australia. All women had a common bond, indeed a common issue that was ‘difficult to dissolve into a party issue’ (Clarke and White 1983: 18). By contrast, in 2005, while there have been advances in women’s participation in the

ALP and the Victorian Branch there are still barriers to women’ representation and presentation particularly in leadership roles.

The ‘gendered’ nature of Australia’s constitutional system

Australia would have advanced earlier had the title ‘woman’ been recognised in the Constitution- makers’ draft for a federated Australia (Clarke and White 1983: 18). This raises the fundamental question as to whether the reasons for the forty-one year time-span between franchise and the actual representation of women in the Federal Parliament may have been due to political or constitutional issues. Considering this background, the following example of indirect discrimination shows cause for Australian women’s continuing subordination.

Justice Elizabeth Evatt has remarked that had women been present at the Conventions preceding federation they would have objected to Section 125 of the Constitution. In their absence, the founding fathers placed the federal capital, Canberra, at least one hundred miles from Sydney in New South Wales. Evatt states that women would have perceived the unrealistic notion of leading a normal family life while participating when Parliament was in session (Evatt, The Age, 4 February 1994). In addition, one might assume that child rearing and domestic work is for women, not men. Helen Irving claims that, when Federation took place, the chances of a man offering to relocate his work to somewhere as remote as Canberra to accommodate his parliamentary wife was very remote indeed. She writes:

Justice Evatt’s intriguing hypothesis makes essentially a modern point: that Australian politics is not yet designed to meet the needs and interests of women, and that our very constitutional detail presents problems for women’s participation. This arose in part because women’s political interests at the time of the Constitution’s drafting were largely defined as lying outside the national sphere, identified as matters not essentially connected with Federation (Irving 1996: 107).

Others have argued that wherever Parliament House was placed it would have presented problems for women expecting to combine a career in politics and a home life. For instance,

A Sydney single mother and Labor MP was unable to accept a cabinet role in Canberra when Labor was in power due to her son being settled in school in Sydney (Anonymous

Interviewee: 11 September 2002). Indeed, women MPs from Tasmania are without a direct route while actively engaged in a Parliament so strangely situated that the air transport system has not fathomed a daily return flight to return them swiftly to their families. Such examples of discrimination against women, is the result of male decision-making in the last

decade of the Nineteenth Century. As highlighted by Dr Evatt’s interesting hypothesis, serious doubts are raised advocating that Australian politics is not commonly framed to suit the needs of women and that the lack of constitutional features contains difficulties for women’s involvement. In this context, one might speculate that the affairs of the nation are

public and male and therefore distinctly Federal. On the other hand, the interests of the women of Australia were, according to the founding fathers, to be the responsibility of the State.

The exclusion of women’s political activities from history

Marilyn Lake notes that, until the 1970s, the recording of Australian history was ‘marked’ by the absence of women. She claims this was not an accident, neither was it an easily

reversed oversight. Not until feminists started recording earlier history did Australian women activists reap the benefits of being political actors. Indeed, recordings of Australian politics were (and are) heedless of the years of ‘political activity of women’ (Lake 1999: 6). Likewise, women were active ‘theorists and practitioners’ of citizenship; they were

the custody rights of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal mothers and the importance of international law’ (Lake 1999: 6). This active participation of women was of no significance to the men who wrote and still document our political history. These women fought for

sexual equality in the writing of history and continue to seek power within the public political sphere of history writing today.

The non-party ideal

Most writers agreed with the importance of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union

(WCTU) during its development in Adelaide. Clarke and White point out that the WCTU argued for the justice of granting votes to women. They also stressed that women might, through judicious voting and active participation in politics, elevate the tone of public life (Clarke and White 1983: 18). It involved intense suffrage activity with its activities for

temperance: ‘Empty-headed men, vicious men, selfish and prejudiced men, above and beyond all others, the men interested in the liquor traffic, are in mortal fear of our possessing that sword, the ballot’ (Scott 1967: 299-322).

It has been noted earlier that some historians suggest that there was merely mild confrontation leading to votes for women. Others claim that women were granted the vote as

a result of manoeuvering by ‘conservative’ colonial Governments. This, they claimed, would lessen the ‘effects’ of ‘extending the franchise to all males.’ Furthermore, they argued ‘Women would vote for conservatives and off-set the effects of the increased working-class vote…’ (Scott 1967: 299-322). Others argue differently.

Although the political parties were now encouraging women to join their ‘organisations’, some Australian women preferred to stimulate the ‘spirit’ of the suffrage movements (Clarke and White 1983: 18). Clarke and White write that they chose to organise themselves into

reform groups for women. They formed the Women’s Service Guilds (WSG) in Western Australia, the Australian Federation of Women Voters (AFWV) and the United Association of Women. Edith Cowan and Bessie Rischbieth were members of the WSG, a non-party organisation (Clarke and White 1983: 19). It trained women in economic matters, social

questions and political rights. Bessie Rischbieth was known for her distinguished career in worldwide feminist circles. Another member was Dr Roberta Jull who practised as the first woman physician (Clarke and White 1983: 19).

In 1914, the Feminist Club of New South Wales was founded to promote ‘equality of status,

opportunity and payment between men and women in all spheres.’ In 1929, the United Associations of Women was formed from the Women’s Service Club, the Women’s League and the Women Voters’ Association. Its forceful president was Jessie Street, a graduate of Sydney University and wife of a Supreme Court judge; feminism and social reform were part of its aims (Clarke and White 1983: 19). Other ‘aims’ promoted equality of status,

‘liberties for men and women’ improved legal status for mothers, ‘equal pay for equal work’, equal moralistic standards for men and women, ‘support for selected women candidates for public office, and the promotion of children’s welfare.’ International peace was another of their aims (Clarke and White 1983: 19).

In 1943, Jessie Street was responsible for a new body in Australia, the Australian Women’s Charter (AWC). The AWC worked for a wage for women in the home, rights and pay for

women and equal status. It also promoted health policies along with education and planning. Such non-party organisations gained popularity between the wars but ‘internal friction during and after the World War II eventually led to their fragmentation and decline’ (Clarke and White

1983: 19).

The focus of political writing has been unsatisfactory when examining the work done by women outside Parliament. However, there is a strong case for arguing that, instead of there being merely a narrative of men’s deeds in the public sphere, there should be a study of women seeking equality in the ALP and the whole society.

The emergence of Party Politics as the cause of dissension

There is evidence that, after suffrage, there were bitter arguments between women over points in question such as conflicting issues relating to party politics. Sawer and Simms

claim bitter struggles occurred over ‘[Labor, non-Labor, non-party or women’s party], class politics…’ Also relevant was the importance or reference to the problem of servants or the desire to integrate with the struggle of working-class women. In addition, sexual politics created dissent whether to support prostitution or control ‘sexual traffic’ (Sawer and Simms

1993: 253).

The second-wave of feminism created quite a debate on prostitution. The Victorian ALP supported the legalisation of brothels; therefore, it might be suggested that the ALP and the Victorian Branch need women in leadership roles to voice their concerns when reforming legislation that concerns women in our society.

Historically, women have been rejected as active members of the public sphere, other than at a supporting level. In fact, the ‘good woman’ has been framed as the ‘embodiment of compliance and passivity’ (Thornton 1996: 10). Consequently, women as citizens have been

required to play an invisible role; this is most obvious in Australian politics. However, Labor’s quota of women has increased markedly, but it still fails to give women equal representation overall in the party machine and parliamentary wing.

Women in Australian Parliaments: The pioneers

It was many years from enfranchisement before women turned a formal right into a reality: that is, the right to stand for Australian Parliaments into the right to actually sit. Their entry into the Australian system of an all-male culture was bound by conditions. For instance,

Sawer and Simms claim that the parliamentary institutions lacked a welcome for women by not providing toilets for women politicians or creches for their children (Sawer and Simms 1993: 75). Before the beginning of World War II, only nine women had been successful in being elected to State Parliaments; Edith Cowan of Western Australia was the first. Two

others had served short terms in the NSW Legislative Council. Of the nine women first elected, four were political daughters or widows; a phenomenon called the ‘male equivalence’ (Currell 1974: 164, 166; Valance 1979: 63) and indicates that the representation of women for political influence is justified due to their replacing husbands or

fathers. (Sawer and Simms 1993: 75-76). In other words, women seeking preselection were more favourably accepted when it meant taking the places of the recently deceased males.

The ‘halo effect’ was a significant factor in the election of the first two women to the House of Representatives in the 1940s; they did so as widows of political males (Sawer and Simms 1993: 75). Enid Lyons was the wife of the deceased Joe Lyons, United Australia Party

(UAP) Prime Minister in the 1930s. She was the mother of twelve children and often regarded as the ‘active force’ behind the Prime Minister. She was, however, a caring conventional wife and mother but, when her husband died, the UAP encouraged her to stand for preselection for the seat where she lived (Clarke and White 1983: 25). She won the seat

of Darwin in Tasmania in 1943 and became the first woman to sit in the House of Representatives (Clarke and White 1983: 25). However, she was not the only woman to sit in the new Parliament; Dorothy Tangney, a Labor representative from Western Australia, had been elected as the first woman senator; she joined Edith Cowan in Canberra. When

Enid Lyons was appointed to the minor portfolio, Vice-President of the Executive Council in the Menzies Government, she became the first Australian woman Cabinet Member (Clarke and White 1983: 24). Dame Enid’s election was generally welcomed by women who had worked for an increase in female representation in Parliament. However, by 1951, Dame

Enid had retired from politics due to poor health. Clarke and White point out that her short time in politics seemed to strengthen traditional male opinions that politics was a man’s game and too tough for women. Yet, her success at obtaining ministerial rank did not necessarily mean that more women won preselection for winnable seats enabling them to sit

in State and Federal Parliaments. In other words, Dame Enid’s ‘political career had a dampening effect on women’s political aspirations for a number of reasons’ (Clarke and White 1983: 24).

Dame Enid was not the kind of woman the women’s movement contemplated as their