Kelly O’Dwyer on why she’s proud to be a feminist

SHE might work for the conservative side of politics, but Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer is determined to achieve gender equality in Australia.

Kelly O'Dwyer: “[Women] haven’t reached full equality; I don’t think anybody can really deny that.” (Pic: Ren Pidgeon for Stellar)

IT was a small act of kindness, but Kelly O’Dwyer’s decision to send a gift to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after the birth of her first baby in June bodes well for the big-picture fortunes of Australian women.

One is the Minister for Women in a Liberal government — and the first female occupant in the role in a conservative Australian government to call herself a proud feminist. The other is a Kiwi former head of the International Union of Socialist Youth. But when it comes to supporting a sister, O’Dwyer makes it clear that her agenda exists beyond party lines.

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“I wrote to Jacinda... in a very personal capacity [and] I did sort of joke that being in public life prepares you really well for motherhood — you get a lot of full, frank and fearless advice. Mothers get that every day from people, particularly other mothers,” says O’Dwyer, 41, who succeeded former long-serving Treasurer Peter Costello in the blue-blood Melbourne seat of Higgins.

“When you’ve got a brand new baby, you sort of think you have some idea of what’s coming, but the truth is you don’t.”

“We want women to be safe in their communities, and homes and workplaces.” (Pic: Ren Pidgeon for Stellar)

After the birth of her second child Edward in April last year, O’Dwyer learnt what a difference comfort can make while breastfeeding at work. So she sent a personal note and a clever gift whizzing across the Tasman.

O’Dwyer’s present: a self-inflating breastfeeding pillow, one that lets mums feed, seated, with their hands free. O’Dwyer had found the pillow helpful herself after being gifted one by her husband, finance industry executive Jon Mant.

She is the mother of two children — daughter Olivia, three, and son Edward, who is now 16 months. “They needed to travel with me to Canberra,” she tells Stellar. “Sometimes I needed to breastfeed on a plane. Breastfeeding [and trying to do things] can be a bit full-on; a lot of people never tell you that. It worked for me, and I thought it might be helpful to her.”

One very notable difference between Ardern’s return to work post-partum and O’Dwyer’s is that while the whole of her nation and a sizeable chunk of the feminist world shared memes on social media about what a legend the Kiwi PM was for breaking new ground (being the first serving New Zealand prime minister to give birth), O’Dwyer’s already strong track record in working for gender equality has gone largely under the radar.

The lack of fanfare for the many firsts O’Dwyer is achieving is ironic, given a former PM in her own party once famously referred to “Australian housewives as they do the ironing”— a stereotype she is smashing to bits.

Juggling parenting and politics: With kids Olivia and Edward, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop.

She is the first mother to take a newborn into a Federal Cabinet meeting and the first treasury portfolio holder to have a cot in her Canberra office. She’s also likely the first new mother in a hefty ministerial role to have come back to work relatively quickly due to her husband taking full-time parental leave. Mant took significant leave after the births of both their children, and he also chose to do what many mothers feel they must, by working part-time when he did go back.

“[Women] haven’t reached full equality; I don’t think anybody can really deny that,” O’Dwyer, also the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, tells Stellar. “I come from a really fundamental position on this issue; [I am] pretty practical. My mum, when I was a very, very young girl, instilled in me the message if you want to have choices in life, you need to be financially independent. You might meet the greatest man in the history of the world, which happily I did, but you must always make sure you are economically literate.”

As a minister, she has a passion for women’s economic empowerment in common with Victoria’s late, highly respected Minister for Women Fiona Richardson, whose last focus before her ultimately fatal cancer returned was enhancing women’s financial power.

“I had the pleasure to meet her,” O’Dwyer says. “She was really lovely to deal with and to be honest, there is so much that does unite us. Unfortunately, that’s the story that’s never, ever told. You can come together and work on particular issues — politics to one side — and just sort of get on with it.

Delivering her maiden speech in 2010.

“I think, quite rightly, we have had a really strong focus on women’s safety — the very first announcement by Malcolm Turnbull when he became Prime Minister was $100 million for [initiatives around the subject], and that will continue. We want women to be safe in their communities, and homes and workplaces.

“But we need to be able to build on that foundation stone of safety. For me it is very much about economic security and capability. So it’s the message my mum gave me as a young girl that I want to take to millions of Australian women.”

O’Dwyer is good at framing most issues hindering Australian women’s journey towards equality on all fronts in an economic way. She believes sexual harassment, the global hot-button issue of 2018, also boils down to another barrier to women’s economic security that must be tackled pragmatically.

“For a long time there has been this sense that sexual harassment in the workplace, for some people, has been seen as a ‘be nice to women’ issue,” she says. “Women misunderstanding somebody opening the door [for them] or having a conversation with them about their career after work [that could be deemed inappropriate].

“In some sense it has been belittled. Not long after I took on my portfolio [in late 2017], I sat down with [Sex Discrimination Commissioner] Kate Jenkins, and we had a really important conversation about sexual harassment. Both of us have a very strong view it goes to women’s financial security and has a very strong economic impact, as well as an emotional impact.”

O’Dwyer stresses that the reason she threw her weight — as well as a large chunk of federal cash — behind Jenkins’s national inquiry into sexual harassment is to do her bit to “reframe” the sexual harassment in the workplace issue as a matter that can handicap women for the rest of their working lives. The minister makes it clear she will not tolerate that, and warns the early indications from the Human Rights Commission’s initial national sexual assault survey “don’t look good”.

Kelly O’Dwyer features in this week’s issue of Stellar.

“We need to feel not only safe in our workplaces — we need to be cognisant of the financial impact [sexual harassment] can have when things go wrong; we need workplaces to have toolkits to deal with it.” O’Dwyer concedes, “I probably sound a bit evangelical about it”; but given the global furore over the treatment of women in the workplace since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, she sounds like she is being clear-eyed about the need to be seen to act — not to mention being electorally savvy.

O’Dwyer also won’t tolerate the low representation of women in leadership roles or safe seats on her side of the House; practical to a tee, she threw $50,000 of her own fundraised money into the Enid Lyons Fighting Fund (to support Liberal women into winnable seats) earlier this year.

She is in large part credited with having finally succeeded in getting her colleagues to back the removal of the tax on tampons, and in contrast to some arch-conservative Australian voices, she acknowledges that the gender pay gap “is real”.

Another initiative that O’Dwyer has created is a women’s leadership network that reaches across political divides to help women in parliamentary life find support, encouragement and, most importantly, progress towards senior office — together. So whether she is ever truly welcomed into the feminist fold — she makes a point of emphasising she is a small-l Liberal and “not a conservative” — may be beside the point.

“I have been taught from a young age that there should be no limits on what women can aspire to, and that women should have equal opportunity to live their best lives and fulfill their potential,” she says. “So while I respect there are some who don’t want to give themselves a label, I’ve never shied away from calling myself a feminist.”

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