HIST2227 Chap.7 Gender and Politics
Gender and Politics
Parliament as a gendered workplace
Week 8 asks how gender shapes political leadership.
Maria Maley and Marian Sawer explain why women’s presence in parliament did not change its norms: members hold great power over staff, adversarial culture rewards dominance, and complaints become partisan weapons.
Gillard and her reception
Julia Gillard’s 2012 misogyny speech and an interview with the cartoonist Bill Leak are the week’s primary sources.
The longer history behind the question
The outline also asks how gender illuminates prime ministerial leadership in the early twentieth century and how Robert Menzies appealed to women voters.
Those questions show that gender in political leadership runs back long before 2012, so an answer about Gillard is stronger when it places her prime ministership in that longer story.
Change in 2021
Maley and Sawer note that only in 2021 was the Sex Discrimination Act amended to make clear that parliamentarians were protected from sexual harassment at work, the same year the Jenkins Review reported a win-at-all-costs culture.
Such late reform is itself evidence of how resistant the institution had been.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Critical mass and resistant norms
- 02
Members of parliament as employers
- 03
Adversarialism as a gendered norm
- 04
The 2012 misogyny speech and the gender card
- 05
Parliamentary privilege and codes of conduct
- 06
Caricature and the female politician
Worked example · free
Comparing staff numbers across parliament
- 1About 470 divided by 102 = about 4.6, so the government had roughly four and a half times as many personal employees.
- 1Staffing power is concentrated in the party in office; Maley and Sawer trace the difficulty of reporting misconduct to members' power over their own staff and to party adversarialism.
Key terms
- Critical Mass
- The level of women's presence expected to trigger institutional change in parliaments.
- Gender Card
- The accusation that a woman raising sexism is using it as a political tactic.
- Parliamentary Privilege
- The tradition that each house regulates its own members, free of outside interference.
- Logic of Appropriateness
- Gendered expectations of how people should behave inside an institution.
- Personal Employees
- Staff some members employ in addition to their five electorate staff.
- Adversarialism
- A style of politics organised as a contest between government and Opposition that rewards dominance in the chamber.
Gender and Politics FAQ
Why didn't more women in parliament change its culture?
Maley and Sawer argue that norms built for members with wives managing family life, together with adversarial politics and members' power over staff, proved hard to shift. Even after women reached a critical mass, complaints were treated as political problems rather than workplace issues.
How was Gillard's misogyny speech received at the time?
It reached two million viewers in ten days, but the press gallery read it almost solely as a tactic in a fight over the speakership. The Opposition and the press gallery framed it as playing the gender card, so its subject, sexism in politics, was largely set aside.
How should I use the Bill Leak interview?
Treat it as evidence of a cartoonist's position rather than a verdict. Leak claimed he draws male and female politicians alike; test that claim against what Maley and Sawer report about sexualised images of Gillard, and attribute his views carefully.
Why is it hard to regulate the conduct of parliamentarians?
Parliamentary privilege, dating to the Bill of Rights of 1689, lets each house regulate its own members free of outside interference. Maley and Sawer show that Australia's parliament long resisted a code of conduct, and a Senate committee rejected one as late as August 2020, arguing that elections were the best scrutiny.
What did the Jenkins Review find?
Maley and Sawer report that the Jenkins Review, published in 2021 as Set the Standard, found widespread fear of reporting misconduct because of a win-at-all-costs culture. Special legislation was needed to exempt submissions from Freedom of Information requests before staff felt safe to take part.
What did Gillard later say about her approach to gender?
Maley and Sawer report that ten years after the misogyny speech, Gillard reflected that she would have done better to name sexism and misogyny sooner, rather than trusting her record in office to settle doubts about a woman leading the country.
Assessment move
Learn the reception of the 2012 speech as a case of source versus reception, and prepare one paragraph on why critical mass did not change parliamentary norms. Then decide how significant gender is for understanding a prime minister’s career, and support your view with one source. When you quote the abuse directed at Gillard, keep it inside quotation marks and attribute it precisely, as the readings do.
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