Dame Margaret Guilfoyle, a Liberal Senator from 1971-1987, was the first woman to hold a cabinet ministerial portfolio in Australia. Now, there will be a Liberal party women’s network named in her honour.
The announcement was made in front of a small group at Parliament House on Wednesday night by Senator Jane Hume, who co-authored a review into the Liberal party’s 2022 election loss.
The women’s network will be established based on one of the recommendations in the review to “provide opportunities and avenues for continued involvement for professional women associated with the party”, Senator Hume said.
Surprised? We are too. The announcement hasn’t been widely reported, and the ABC made clear how little details there are about this network in their report.
It’s left us wondering why the party wouldn’t jump at the chance for some positive press to show it is addressing its so-called “woman problem” that several commentators have been discussing, especially in the last week.
The launch of the network comes after a shocker week for the party. Earlier this week, Senator Anne Ruston, the current Shadow Minister for Health, was relegated to second place on the South Australian Senate ticket. She was replaced by Alex Antic, who told The Australian of his scepticism towards gender diversity in the party attracting women voters.
“The ‘gender card’ is nothing but a grievance narrative,” Senator Antic said, “constructed by the activist media and a disgruntled political class.
“We need the best person for the job regardless of race, gender or sexuality.”
With words like that, establishing a women’s network would look great for the Liberal party and show they are doing something about gender diversity.
After all, Liberals are proud of the many firsts for women the party helped facilitate over the course of Australian political history. Under the prime ministership of Stanley Bruce – a member of one of the Liberal party’s predecessors, the Nationalist party – the first women were elected into State parliaments in the 1920s, including Edith Cowan, Millicent Preston Stanley and Irene Longman.
Former prime minister Sir Rober Menzies helped establish the Federal Women’s Committee for the Liberal party in 1945, an initiative that became enshrined in the Liberal party’s constitution the following year.
“Women are unquestionably destined to exercise more and more influence upon practical politics in Australia,” he said in 1944 at the Albury Conference. “Now, we have an organisation in which all distinctions have gone, and with men and women working equally for the one body.”
Then, of course, came Dame Margaret Guilfoyle, the namesake of the new women’s network for the Liberal party.
As an accountant, active member of the Liberal party and a dedicated mother of three, Guilfoyle endured and survived intrusive questions from journalists regarding her family, stereotypes and everything else women in politics had to endure in the 20th century (and, arguably, in the present), before she was elected to the Senate in 1970.
Just four years later, Guilfoyle was appointed to the Liberal party’s shadow ministry in 1974 and became a cabinet minister the following year upon Robert Menzies’ election. She was the first woman to do so.
It’s no wonder the new women’s network was named after the trailblazer that Guilfoyle, who paved the way for other “firsts” for the party – namely Julie Bishop as the first woman to become Foreign Minister, or Senator Marise Payne as the first woman to become Defence Minister, plus several others.
Yet there is undeniably a “woman problem” in the Liberal Party. Just 28 per cent of Liberal parliamentarians in the House of Representatives and the Senate are women. It’s a far cry from the 50 per cent target that Senator Hume’s review recommended the party achieve within the next decade.
Earlier this week, Liberal MP Bridget Archer was recognised as Australia’s political leader of the year, awarded with the McKinnon Prize. The award was specifically for her “rare courage” in “standing up for her principles… even when this has put her at odds with her party”. Archer has crossed the floor on numerous occasions, including debates on anti-corruption, stronger protections for LGBTQIA+ students and action on climate change.
To publicise the Dame Margaret Guilfoyle women’s network would demonstrate just how proud the Liberal party claim to be about their history of women in the party. To not publicise it perhaps indicates how ashamed they are of the present.