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IF YOU’D TOLD US A FEW YEARS AGO that a female world leader
would have her baby with her while addressing the United Nations, we
probably would have called your bluff. But in September, New Zealand
prime minister Jacinda Ardern did just that when she took her daughter,
Neve, to the UN General Assembly in New York. This felt like a giant win
for all working mothers (and fathers). You see, when Ardern was elected
prime minister in 2017, she promised to make New Zealand the best
place in the world to be a child – with one of her goals being to create
workplace policies that give children a chance to bond with their parents.
Ardern isn’t the only woman doing politics in a new way. In Iceland,
after Katrín Jakobsdóttir took the reins as prime minister in 2017, she
became the first in the world to make it illegal for men to be paid more
than women for doing the same job. In the US, 29-year-old Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, an American of Puerto Rican descent, became the
youngest woman ever elected to Congress, proving women of colour
have a seat at the table in American politics. Call it an uprising, call it
a rose-tinted revolution: women are transforming the political landscape.“I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE STILL PROTESTING
THIS SHIT IN 2019”
Needless to say, the current influx of women into the houses
of power has been neither fast nor easy. For women, under-
representation is a glaring reality. They’re heads of state in only
six per cent of the countries in the world today. And in Australia,
the 150-strong House of Representatives has just 45 female
MPs (things look slightly better in the Senate, where women
make up 30 of the 76 senators).
Last year was a particularly bad year for sexism in Australian
politics. During a parliamentary debate, former senator David
Leyonhjelm reportedly yelled, “Stop shagging men” at Greens
senator Sarah Hanson-Young, then told her to “fuck off” when
h f d h m about it. She made a stinging statement
m in Parliament, then sued Leyonhjelm for
e is a culture in Parliament that is very
ause of the nature of political debate,”
sELLE. “However, the rough and tumble
bates of ideas and policy. There’s a line and
the moment women start to be denigrated
hey wear or their sex life, or with the use of
sexual slurs and bullying to shut them up, silence them and hope
they sit down and don’t participate. That’s not part of the rough
and tumble, that’s sexist bullying.” And, she points out, it’s not
acceptable. “Parliament is meant to be setting the standard of
behaviour, modelling best practice,
and we’re not, not when such
archaic and outdated views
towards women are held by some
of the people who sit in Parliament.
We still don’t have enough women
in Parliament, so a very male-
dominated boys’ club still rules the
day. Australia is still well and truly
behind comparable nations when
it comes to women being elected.”
Former Liberal MP Julia Banks
would agree. In November she
announced her move over to the
crossbench with a statement saying
Parliament urgently needed equal
representation. “Across both major
parties, the level of regard and
respect for women in politics is
years behind the business world,”
she said, revealing to ELLE:
“Parliament really feels like walking
into the late ’80s. When I first
entered the workforce, I saw
elements of what I’ve seen today
in Parliament.”“THIS IS MY RESISTING
BITCH FACE”
Things are changing, however,
with a new generation of women
engaging in politics in new ways. In January 2017, the Women’s
March saw more than five million people worldwide marching
in solidarity for women’s rights. Nine months later, news of the
Harvey Weinstein scandal broke. In the 24 hours that followed,
4.7 million people engaged in the #MeToo conversation on
Facebook alone, with 12 million posts and reactions as women
shared their stories of workplace sexual harassment. Even
a night at the cinema got political, with Meryl Streep, Reese
Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and the full force of Hollywood’s
elite fighting for sexual equality in the Time’s Up movement. “The
Time’s Up and the Me Too movements have played a significant
role in shifting the conversation to women saying, ‘Enough is
enough,’” says Hanson-Young. “The last bastion in Australia >she confronted him
denouncing sexism
defamation. “There
oppositional beca
Hanson-Young tell
should be about de
that line is crossed
because of what th
WOMEN IN POLITICS