On Saturday in Adelaide the Prime Minister delivered an address to the Federal Women’s Committee luncheon to help celebrate the committee’s 70th anniversary and to honour the work of women in the Liberal party.
It is an astonishing speech to read. Not, sadly, due to its astute revelations or bold leadership, rather it is its complete and curious absence of substance, critical analysis and deductive reasoning that makes it shocking.
“The Australian Women’s National League was one of the strongest of the groups that Menzies summoned to discuss the formation of our Party. In return for joining the new Liberal Party, League President Dame Elizabeth Couchman insisted on the equal representation of men and women in senior party positions, at least in the Victorian division,” Abbott explained. “This was the first occasion that a quota was established for female political representation anywhere in Australia – and it happened in the Liberal Party and under our founder. It entrenched the place of women in the structures of our Party and provided a springboard for some to enter parliament.”
Then consider the questions the Prime Minister poses just a few hundred words later.
“It’s precisely because merit should be all that matters, that I ask myself: why isn’t our party selecting more women members of parliament?
Why isn’t our party, as relatively advanced on this today as we were 70 years ago?
Why haven’t we remained ahead of our time in promoting women; and is that one of the reasons why we no longer attract the majority of women voters?
On this anniversary, we owe it to ourselves and to those who have gone before us to pose this question.”
Tony, the answer to these questions is in full view in the opening paragraph of your speech! In 1944 Robert Menzies declared that “men and women will, side by side, be members of this organisation”.
It wasn’t merely a motherhood statement. It was a statement of intent and it was backed up with action. They introduced a quota, as you explained and guess what? “It entrenched the place of women in the structures of our Party and provided a springboard for some to enter parliament.”
Yet further into his speech he explores the current situation.
“There are relatively few women in leadership positions in the lay party; there are relatively few women in the parliament; and because there are relatively few women in the parliament it’s harder to get more women into the cabinet.
Regrettably, the percentage of Liberal women in both chambers has plateaued since John Howard came into office.
In the national parliament, women hold one in five of our seats in the House of Representatives and about one in six in the Senate; or to put it the other way, men hold four in every five of the House seats and five in every six of our Senate seats.
It’s hard to believe that politically-committed and meritorious conservative men outnumber like-minded women by at least four to one.”
Indeed Tony! It is not just hard to believe, it’s entirely fanciful to believe! And, believe it or not, quite a few people have been making this point for some time….
That being said, the PM did state that failing to increase the number of women in the party would be letting the party down. The federal Vice President Rosemary Craddock is preparing a report to the Federal Executive to make the party more representative. It is Tony’s hope that “the report will canvas specific steps to lift our female parliamentary representation and propose specific targets and goals for the years ahead,”.
It’s a good start but once again I’m struck by the absurdity of the seemingly impossible challenge of achieving equal representation.
For all the effort, investment and rhetoric about diversity programs, building a pipeline of talent, to dismantling unconscious bias in the workplace, the solution – should we choose it – is astonishingly simple.
We start appointing women into roles. We do what Dame Elizabeth Couchman did and we impose requirements for equal representation.
As the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick says, if we don’t intentionally include women, we unintentionally exclude them. That much is clear.
If anyone, a business leader, a university vice-chancellor or a political leader, is interested in challenging that, the solution really is that simple. They begin intentionally including women.
If the Prime Minister is genuine about seeking answers, he could begin by scrutinising his Cabinet and all the Liberal party representatives in parliament and examine whether merit really is distributed along the lines of the extraordinary odds it seems to suggest.
Isn’t it astounding that 70 years ago the Liberal party, the party which now wears its “anti-quota” status proudly on its sleeve, imposed a quota and made terrific and significant strides towards equal representation. What has happened between now and then that’s made anything akin to a quota anathema?