Two reports came out this week that have me thinking more deeply about the Liberal Party’s “woman problem”.
I’m looking at the questions put to party stalwarts as they review their spectacular wipe-out at the last election — and those that weren’t asked.
On Monday, the Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation released the first of what will be an annual scorecard of women’s income and health. The findings are devastating: Australian women are now poorer and less healthy than they were a decade ago.
At the current rate, it will take 70 years to reach equality in full-time employment and more than 200 years to reach income equality. What’s more, in 2020 women reported poorer health than men in all bar one domain, including in mental health, physical and social functioning, and bodily pain. More women than men experience elevated psychological distress, with rates rising sharply in women aged 18 to 24 and 55 to 64 over the past two decades.
Also on Monday, the results of the Australian Election Study (AES) were released. For 35 years, the study has been the leading barometer of political attitudes and behaviour, providing unparalleled insights into voters’ choices in elections.
The headline-grabbing findings included the fact that support for teal independents was most likely from tactical Labor or Greens voters rather than dissatisfied Liberals, and at election time Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce were the most unpopular party leaders since the study began in 1987. Ouch.
But less talked about results include the fact that the “gender gap” in Australian politics (the difference in men and women’s voting habits) continued to shift in a way that is bad news for the Liberals. The study noted that gender was a “big part of the conversation” during the election, referring to political staffer Brittany Higgins’ sexual assault allegation, the subsequent protests and the “well-educated women” leading the teal wave.
The survey went on to ask: “To what extent are these claims that women cost the Coalition the election supported by the evidence?” The answer: gender differences in the voting habits of men and women at the 2022 election played a role. While 38% of men gave their first preference vote in the House of Representatives to the Liberal-National Coalition, just 32% of women did. For Labor, the trend was the opposite, with candidates attracting 36% of women’s votes, compared with 32% of men.
This was the continuation of a long trend. Over the past 30 years, the gender gap has reversed, with women slightly more likely to vote for the Coalition in the 1990s and men more likely to vote Labor. Today, more men prefer the Coalition and more women prefer Labor. And while the gender gap in voting for the Coalition peaked in 2016 and 2019, with 10% more men than women voting for the Coalition and that gap narrowed slightly in 2022, it was not because the Coalition did better among women, but because they lost votes from both men and women.
As a result, the Liberal Party is, according to reports, looking at its woman problem as part of the soon-to-be-completed review into the election, which is being co-chaired by former party director Brian Loughnane and Liberal Senator Jane Hume. And while the results have not yet been released, they have started to leak in the media, which has inevitably focused almost exclusively on the issue of women’s representation in the party and whether it would — at last — swallow the bitter pill of quotas (spoiler, the answer is still no).
I’m not going to lie. I was deeply frustrated.
This brings me back to the study about women’s diminished economic security and health and the questions we are and are not asking Liberal Party stalwarts.
We should be asking: when will the Liberal Party be held accountable for the fact that women are poorer and sicker now than they were nearly a decade ago when the Coalition first came to power? This happened on its watch. We should be asking: why aren’t the policies (or lack thereof) that led to this outcome warranting further scrutiny as part of this post-election navel-gazing?
And why aren’t questions about this unfortunate legacy for women being put directly to Hume as she does the media rounds to talk about the review? She was, after all, the Coalition government’s first minister for women’s economic security — and the first minister for women’s economic security full stop. Why isn’t she being asked directly about the kinds of policies she oversaw?
These included the early- access-to-super scheme implemented at the height of the pandemic in which more women than men cleared out their super entirely with little hope of building it back as they enter their prime child-bearing years.
Before the election, I quipped that Hume could, rightly, be rebranded the minister for women’s economic insecurity such was her appalling record in the portfolio, and judging by this latest research, I was not wrong.
The debate cannot and must not focus exclusively on the optics of women’s representation in the Liberal Party and quotas while ignoring the policies and neglect that have profoundly, negatively impacted women’s lives.
The Liberal Party will need to address both if it wishes to reverse the “gender gap” — and that must start with a proper reckoning with its record.
Can the Liberal Party change its attitude toward women, or is it too late? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Up until 2020 men died 6.5 years younger than women. Post COVID19 men now die 7.2 years younger than women. When you start advocating for this “gap” to be closed then I will listen to your arguments on other issues.
All good points, but for the sake of balance let’s not forget the previous government can boast of some achievements for women. After the protests by women outside parliament on 4th March 2021, Morrison told Parliament, “Not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not here in this country.” Praise the Lord! (And pass the ammunition…)
And don’t forget the huge benefits Abbott provided women as they did the ironing.
I cannot understand why women continue to vote against their own best interests. For that matter, I can’t understand why men continue to vote against the interests of the women they care for. That’s patriarchy in action – where, whatever your gender you are persuaded to do harm to yourself “for your own good”.
Shorter Mary: you’re not a real woman unless you agree with my politics.
Bloody hard for me to think up a more odiously condescending chunk of sexist objectification. And I’m – obviously – a fully paid-up member of Teh Evilz Misogynist Patriarchy! So…jolly well done, Mary! Ten ‘hoorays’ at last count, too. So jolly well done, CrikeySoftPapProgSplainers all!
Altogether now: three cheers for feminist progress and the freeing up of Teh Womenz to think independently, each for themselves! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!
But it’s not politics. Women are objectively worse off with Coalition Governments.
And men are better off? Rich men clearly. The stunning thing about the last (or any election) is why so many people vote LNP.
Not really sure how that’s relevant ? ?♂️. It’s not an either/or situation.
Crikey might need to check their forum code. That ?♂️ should have been a shrug emoji.
Accordingly to whose criteria, Doc? Come on, think outside your ‘settled’ assumptions, your ‘objectively worse off’ assertions. Not every single women in Australia thinks the ‘gender pay gap’ is a legitimate measure of women being ‘worse off’ – even if they do agree one exists meaningfully, which (again) many just don’t, because they factor financial things into the comparisons that professional feminism doesn’t (like joint rights to Super, accrued property rights, longer life spans and received estate wealth, earnings manifest in not having to actually earn, while still being housed, fed and etc). Not every woman agrees that better access to childcare automatically makes women ‘better off’. Not every woman thinks parliamentary quotas do, either. Etc. There are many, many, gendered/comparative metrics which professional knowledge class women simply (and arrogantly) assume are ‘better for all women’ on no more ‘objective’ grounds than that they happen to be ‘better’ for professional knowledge class women. Or, increasingly, have been deliberately designed to be better for professional knowledge class women by the professional knowledge class women designing them….with the actual (as opposed to theoretical, claimed, asserted, PR-fluffed) flow-on impact on non-PKCW being of no particular interest to anyone in that knowledge class cohort. You might not agree with a whit of what such women think, but they’re women, and not all of them ‘vote against their own interests’ because they’ve been ‘persuaded’ by Teh Evilz Patriarchyzzz ‘to harm themselves for their own good.’
You soft pap progs really need to get out of the habit of mistaking your deeply-subjective (often highly contested) preferences and your privileged lived experiences for ‘objective’ facts and universal, settled policy consensus. Chrs.
LOL. My response answering your question by quoting the article and the report is apparently too controversial for the modbot to allow, but your inane fallacy-laden conservative rambling is not.
Click on the link in the third paragraph and read the article.
Google for “Monash Centre for Health Research womens health scorecard” and click the first link to read the actual report.
Therein lie the answers to your question.
What an egregious piece of mansplaining. I’m impressed you have such a deep understanding of the needs, hopes and thought patterns of women in general. Kindly don’t assume knowledge you clearly don’t possess, judging from your weirdly superior, deeply paternalistic and essentially clueless diatribe.
1984.
The problem with the Liberals is that they are not liberal at all and bear no resemblance to the party they started as. While there were never many women out front, in the past there have been some very skilled ones. Once again, I see the dead hand of JW Howard who despite always squawking about the broad church, actually removed the heart of the party and made it a very right wing and narrow one. With these moderates or rather actual liberals went most of the thinking process. In their place we got flacks and frauds and jumped up advisers. I cannot see why any rational woman would want to be a part of them. Example from NSW senior and apparently competent woman gets rolled in a pre selection in place of a frigging adviser. We do not need any of them in the parliament based on their recent performance. BAH. And if Jane Hume is an example of their female talent they are doomed.
Yes, no need for Kristina to feel frustrated. If the Liberal Party wants to condemn itself to long-term decline and irrelevance, that is not a bad thing at all. The ALP will then be the natural rational, centrist party of government, looking after Australian capitalism’s best long-term interests. with a Green and independent opposition trying to keep Labor honest, while a rightist LNP rump of angry old white men rages from the sidelines.
Rather like the readership of Crikey.
The problem with the Liberals is that we are stuck with them.
How is it possible that Teals won seats mainly because of tactical voting by Labor and Green voters? We have preferential voting. Liberals won these seats last time. If Liberal voters did not change their votes then the Coalition would have won them again.
ALP and Greens voters, and possibly other unaligned voters with them, recognised that neither the ALP nor the Greens would win the seat. So they voted 1 for teals candidates, whereas they would never have voted for the Liberals. That’s why it’s called tactical or strategic voting – people who would NEVER vote Lib would vote teal or independent.
We saw it here in the ACT too. I know people who detested Seselja and always Put Zed Last on their Senate ballot but it was never enough to oust him. At the recent election Pocock was seen as a viable alternative and I know quite a few lifetime ALP voters who voted for Pocock – so much so there were late concerns that Gallagher might not get her quota.
But this is what preferential voting enables everyone to do, all the time.
I haven’t yet managed to read the ANU’s Australian Election Study for May but this is reported in The Guardian:
“The study found that among supporters of teal independents, 31% voted Labor in 2019, 24% for the Greens and only 18% voted Liberal.”
Who did the missing 27% vote for?
Spot ON!
Innumeracy seems to be a precondition for political scribblers.