In 2003 Victorian Labor MP Kirstie Marshall was asked to leave State Parliament because she was breastfeeding her 11-day-old daughter. She was attending her first parliamentary question time but was ejected because of a parliamentary rule that does not permit “strangers” or unelected members in the house.
At the time Marshall said she acted instinctively: “I actually turned up just as the bells were ringing and Charlotte was due for a feed. So I whacked her on the breast and walked in, sat down.”
In 2009, the President of the Senate ruled that Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young’s two year old daughter be removed from the chamber because she was a “stranger”. One of the senator’s staff carried Hanson-Young’s daughter outside and she later remarked: “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so humiliated in my life.”
The day after Hanson-Young’s daughter was removed from the chamber Bernard Keane wrote about the starkly family-unfriendly treatment in Crikey. “Sarah Hanson-Young is to be commended for having her child with her in the chamber yesterday. It was for a division, not a debate, and her daughter was about to leave to return to Adelaide.”
He cited Natasha Stott-Despoja, who was instrumental in having the Senate standing order on “strangers” — non-senators — in the chamber so that it didn’t apply to breastfeeding mothers. “There was no question it was an overreaction by the President, as there is flexibility for this sort of thing to be accommodated. But it is symbolic of the family-unfriendly nature of Parliament when it comes to balancing work and family,” Stott-Despoja said.
“Politicians work extraordinarily long hours. Often I’d go into the building at seven and not leave till midnight. Every workplace is different but in that time, some interaction with your family is not unreasonable — in fact it’s humanising. I had full-time child-care, because it’s the nature of the job, but when you’re four minutes away from a crucial division it’s not unreasonable. To see this just breaks my heart.”
In a 2009 report entitled Children in the Parliamentary Chambers written, Dr Mark Rodrigues examined this topic at length.
“Over the past 30 years there has been a dramatic increase in the representation of women in Parliament and some of them have given birth while in office,” he writes.
The list of women who have had babies whilst in parliament has grown steadily from 1995 and includes Ros Kelly, Jacinta Collins, Jackie Kelly, Anna Burke, Sophie Mirabella, Tanya Plibersek, Kate Lundy, Nicola Roxon, Catherine King and Kirsten Livermore.
Whilst it’s hardly the norm – women still make up less than a third of all MPs – combining parenting with politics is becoming an increasingly visible issue. Hopefully, as that continues, the reality faced by those navigating the system will be far more supportive than it was for Kirstie Marshall and Sarah Hanson-Young.
Yesterday Latika Bourke reported that Kelly O’Dwyer, Kate Ellis and Amanda Rishworth are all currently pregnant. The image of these three well established politicians bearing a baby bump is worth framing.
They say ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’, so the fact there are three pregnant politicians right now is heartening and the message it sends potentially powerful. There is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to female representation in Australian politics but it doesn’t mean the small gains aren’t worth celebrating.