More women in parliament?
Just over six months since its formation, the Australian Women's Party is standing 17 candidates in the federal election. It is fielding 12 Senate candidates in five states (Qld, NSW, WA, SA and Tas), four House of Representative candidates in Queensland (three in Brisbane and one in Townsville), and one in the electorate of Parkes in rural NSW. The AWP is directing its preferences to the Greens, then the Democrats, before flowing on to Labor before the Coalition. It based its preference decisions on each party's record in promoting women, as well as their policies in a range of areas. Various AWP state groups will also be directing preferences to other local progressive parties such as the Indigenous People's Party in Queensland. In WA, the AWP may split their ticket between the Greens and the Democrats. The formation of the AWP has struck a chord with many who want to see advances for women in the 1990s. The party has experienced rapid growth since it's formation last August and now has a membership of more than 1200. It is receiving 20 new membership applications every week. The positive response to the formation of the AWP is not difficult to understand given the record of the major parties in regard to women. On both representation and policy, Labor and the Coalition are failing women. As of July there were 136 women in state and federal parliaments out of a total of 841. Women make up a small proportion of the ALP's and Coalition's candidates, and Labor seems unable to deal with the issue of female representation, failing to make progress on its affirmative action policy to allocate women candidates 35% of winnable seats by 2002. At the level of policy, Labor's 13 years in government have only paid lip service to women's liberation and it is now in the process of undermining and dismantling many women's services established during the 1970s under pressure from the women's liberation movement at the time. If elected on March 2, the Coalition will without a doubt head down the same path, but probably at a faster pace. So a lot of women are looking for alternatives. But has the AWP found the right formula for advancing women's interests? The central aim of the AWP is to achieve equal representation of women in parliament. The AWP is right to argue that women should have equal opportunity to be elected to parliament. And more advocates of women's rights in parliament can help the cause of women's rights. But having an equal number of women as men in parliament is not, in and of itself, going to improve the lives of women. For one, a person's gender does not determine their stand on issues such as abortion rights, child-care, welfare, wages and work issues, health services, marriage and divorce, or any other question impacting on women's lives. The examples of Margaret Thatcher and Elaine Nile are obvious. But politicians like Carmen Lawrence are not much better: she began eroding public health care as premier of WA. Remember the slogan "change doesn't start at the top"? It acknowledges that even the most progressive and talented of women in a handful of "positions of power" cannot advance the interests of women in general without a strong, vocal women's movement backing them up. Getting equal representation of women in parliament will be a huge step forward when it is the consequence of a real improvement in the status of women in all areas of public and private life. In the meantime, and to achieve that, our central aim as feminists needs to be building a broad, independent women's liberation movement which struggles uncompromisingly to improve the lives of all women in all areas, and which relies on no-one else, in parliament or outside, to do it for us.
By Trish Corcoran