If the pollsters are mistaken and Kerry Chikarovski gets the top NSW parliamentary job ahead of the ALP right's Bob Carr, will this herald better times for women?
"Chika" seems to have the support of Eva Cox, self-styled feminist commentator, who recently gave her the thumbs up for her work as the state's minister for the status of women from 1993-95. Cox says: "She was actually quite good ... she was quite prepared to go in and do things", adding, "I am not saying she is a great, deep thinker but I am not sure who is. She is a pragmatic, can-do person and with good advice will do well" (Weekend Australian, March 6-7).
Whatever Chikarovski "went in and did" does not, however, seem to have helped the majority of women in NSW. For example, it was during her term as minister that a furore over abortion access erupted when Justice Newman reinforced in 1994 the illegality of abortion in NSW.
Newman refused to rule in favour of a woman suing a medical clinic for negligence when they forced her to continue an unwanted pregnancy because they did not detect it before it was too late to have an abortion. Newman likened her lost opportunity to a thief being denied the opportunity to steal a car.
Despite the demands from women at the time for the decriminalisation of abortion, Chikarovski did nothing to initiate a change in the law to give women this fundamental right, one supported by around 80% of the population.
Anyone who believes that women in parliament will make a difference because of their gender should think about the many contrary examples. In the last federal election, a record number of women entered the House of Representatives, most of them Coalition MPs. But this had not improved the lot of ordinary women. In fact, life for millions of women in Australia has become harder.
Anita Keating, Australia's former "first lady", said recently that it was important for women to "take up the challenge of politics", as she herself might do. She too subscribes to the "women can make a difference because they are women" theory of political involvement. She said: "The right woman can soften the argumentative face of parliament, while still standing firm on the relevant issue. She can use her consensual approach to problem solving in the electorate while still remaining decisive" (Weekend Australian, March 6-7).
I'm sure all those women who are worse off under Amanda Vanstone's university fees, Judy Moylan's "back to the family" policies and Jocelyn Newman's social security cutbacks feel a little better knowing that at least these blows were the result of a "softer and more consensual" approach to politics!
Keating's role model seems to be Hillary Clinton, who she described as "one of the most extraordinary and visionary women in the world". Yes, extraordinary for standing by Bill for so long, but her "vision" for the US health-care system (her main sphere of political activity) has not reduced the number of people who die waiting for treatment they cannot afford without health insurance.
Her and the President's shared "vision" of a "working America" has justified the introduction of a brutal welfare system which will assist individual citizens (including sole mothers) for no more than five years of their life, no matter what their circumstances. The accompanying low minimum wage regulations have hit working class people, and especially women, very hard.
Women politicians in Britain have not often been champions of women's rights either. Answering Natasha Walter, author of The New Feminism and one who admires former PM Margaret Thatcher for "normalising female success", writer John Pilger correctly points out that Thatcher was no-one's feminist sister. "Neither are the massed ranks of female Blairite MP's who supported the [British] government's assault on single mothers and the criminal bombing and starving of women, men and children in Iraq" (New Statesman, March 5).
This is not to say that women can't make a difference, both in and out of parliament. But it is not their gender that determines whether they will use their efforts for the benefit of all women, rather than just themselves and a few select "sisters in suits". It is their politics which determines whose interests they will represent.
For my once-in-four-years opportunity for "democratic participation", I'd rather back a male candidate who genuinely and actively supports women's liberation than an Amanda Vanstone.
By Margaret Allum