For most women, politics is about families – not feminism

There is a blithe assumption across the ideological spectrum that more women in politics is a good thing without explaining why.

Crossbenchers Dr Kerryn Phelps, Julia Banks and Rebekha Sharkie embrace after the passing of the medivac bill vote. Picture: Gary Ramage

The group hug between Kerryn Phelps, Julia Banks and Rebekha Sharkie after the passing of the medivac legislation was a real flaunting feminist moment. They were an effusively self-congratulating group of women on a triumphalist high over what was indeed a historic achievement, defeating the government on the floor of the house for the first time since 1941. One cannot deny the right of these women to feel vindicated. The arguments for the bill were emotive but Phelps’s medical credentials went a long way to giving the bill credibility.

However, some women who have different political opinions might not have felt so triumphant. Many women who are just as ­intelligent and capable, and just as sympathetic on a human level, might have had a different opinion about political reality and the consequences of this bill.

There is a mistaken notion about women in politics that they all have to think the same way about a range of social issues. This is because feminist ideology rules anything to do with women in public life. Accordingly, women are portrayed as having more empathy and being more collegiate than men, although most of us have met just as many flinty and non-collegiate women as we have men. We are different from men — but not that different. But we are always being told we need more women in politics, especially by Banks, who has complained ­vociferously about bullying.

“Often when good women ‘call out’ or are subjected to bad behaviour, the reprisals, backlash and commentary portrays them as the bad ones, the liar, the trouble­maker, emotionally unstable or weak, or someone who should be silenced,” Banks told the house in resigning from the Liberal Party. “To those who say politics is not for the faint-hearted and that women have to ‘toughen up’, I say this: the hallmark characteristics of the Australian woman … be they in my local community, in politics, business, the media and sport — are resilience and a strong authentic independent spirit.”

I agree. Australian women are well known for their strong and ­independent spirits. But it is a pity that in acting like the caricature of the troublemaking, faint-hearted whinger she abhors, Banks didn’t take her own advice. Unfortunately, too many women who get into strife in politics tend to fall in a heap and blame male bullying.

However, when Banks and co weep about bullying and party politics being a men’s club, and Labor answers by spruiking its 50 per cent representation target, what are they really talking about? Are they really asking us to support more talented, able women from both sides of politics and right across the social and cultural spectrum, or are they in fact talking about more Left-leaning women in politics because of a mistaken view that the Left is the natural milieu of women?

One expects that if it is desirable for women to enter politics, they might bring something different from men, yet none of the great women stars of politics seem to operate all that differently from men, whether we are talking about Theresa May, Angela Merkel or any of the lesser lights in our own political firmament. Perhaps the question we should really be asking is why we need more women in politics. What difference do women make? No one on the Left or the Right is brave enough to ask this hard question.

There is a blithe assumption across the ideological spectrum that more women in politics is a good thing without explaining why. Most people don’t really care who represents them, male or ­female, as long as they address their most pressing concerns. The Left’s push for quotas is actually an admission of defeat in the quest to recruit suitable female candidates, aside from being anathema to women with any sense of self-­respect, let alone brains. Meanwhile, the Right, while eschew­ing quotas, can be as manipulative as the Left in picking and choosing women who it sees as biddable in an attempt at virtue-signalling.

Meanwhile, Australian women realise that the push to have more women in politics is window dressing to ­appease them, but unlikely to ­affect them or their children. Consequently, they are sceptical, even cynical, about joining the political fray. The only women who are really interested in doing politics don’t seem to have lives with the same demands as average women, particularly on the home front.

Frankly, it is too hard a job, especially in federal politics. There are a few women in politics who have demanding domestic lives, but not many. I have found over the years a decided lack of ­interest in federal political affairs among women, especially women with children. Young women might be interested in a broad spectrum of issues but women with children are really only interested in the local things that affect their families: the school, the hospital, the cost of living, especially energy costs, and the problems of the neighbourhood. They feel that federal politics, in particular, is very remote — and they are right.

The issue that women as a separate cohort really care about is, first, family policy. But it was men, John Howard and Peter Costello, who championed the concerns the middle-income family, and Howard in particular who supported the women who primarily identified as wives and mothers.

Howard’s base was disillusioned Labor voters who wanted more and better family policy. These policies appeal to both women and men with families.

Right now there is a vacuum in policy that no one, man or woman, is really addressing. Ambitious women politicians are not very interested in what they see as narrow family issues, but these are actually what most people with families care about.

Lately we have had several competent women on both sides of parliament. There have been some effective female ministers, and two premiers are women. However, unfortunately, from too many of the women in politics all we have had is factional infighting as in the case of Banks and, with Phelps and co, a lot of ideological posturing. My bet is this will discourage even more young women with the right intellectual and character qualifications, minus the empty ideological baggage, from joining the political fray.