Can Sussan Ley fix the Liberal Party’s so-called ‘women problem’? It’s a formidable task, but it must happen if the party hopes to form government again.
New research released this week traces the party’s problem with women back to policy shifts made under former Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader John Howard.
The research, conducted by Dr Blair Williams from Monash University, explains that Howard’s push to move the party in a more socially and economically conservative direction, beginning in the 1980s, sidelined women.
Four decades later, the ramifications are still being felt.
Dr Williams’ research is one of the first academic analyses of the federal Liberal Party after its loss at the recent 2025 federal election.
It’s particularly significant given the Liberal Party was once the “party of choice” for women, Dr Williams explains in the paper.
Women played a key role in founding the Liberal Party in 1944 and helped it achieve many historic firsts for gender equity. In 1949, the Liberal Party was the first in Australian history to specifically target women in its election campaign. Later, the party pioneered socially liberal policies, like legalising divorce in 1959 and landmark childcare legislation in 1972.
“Howard completely remodelled the Liberal Party in his own image, abandoning many socially-liberal traditions of former leaders Robert Menzies and Malcolm Fraser,” Dr Williams said.
“In doing so, he sidelined many of the party’s moderates, especially its liberal feminists like Dame Beryl Beaurepaire who had lamented the Party’s increasing conservatism and the exclusion of women from policy input.
“More recent leaders, like Abbott, Morrison and Dutton, have channelled Howard’s leadership style and approach to gender equality policy, women voters and women in the party, to its detriment.”
“The early Liberal Party wasn’t perfect by any means, and their policies tended to assume that women were primarily homemakers and mothers,” Dr Williams said.
“Yet the party’s recognition of women as voters and efforts to acknowledge their issues were groundbreaking for the time.
“While the ALP remained a blokey party that mainly spoke to working-class male voters, the Liberals spoke to women and were the first party to specifically target them during the 1949 election campaign.”
Dr Williams attributes John Howard’s influence from the 1980s onwards as being a key driver of the party’s slide into a more conservative direction. This conservatism, which has now been embedded for decades, has led the party to sideline women.
“It was no secret that the Howard Government opposed feminism, which it saw as a narrow ‘sectional interest’ of ‘elites’,” Dr Williams said.
“Howard immediately began dismantling hard-won gender equality measures that had made Australia world-leading in gender equality policy.
“The party of a ‘broad church’ has shifted further right, so it’s unsurprising that the values of the modern Liberal Party fail to resonate with many women voters or candidates.”
And while Howard is no longer in parliament, his influence within the party remains strong. He recently spoke to the media about why he opposes quotas for women in the party, even in the wake of its appalling election result.
“I don’t think I believe in quotas for anything. I just think you have to make judgments about individuals,” he said.
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