... and ain't i a woman: 'Affirmative action' in the ALP?
The National Committee of Review's report into the Labor Party, headed by former prime minister Bob Hawke and former NSW premier Neville Wran, has been angrily criticised by the ALP lobby group Emily's List.Emily's List, which describes itself as a “national organisation aimed at getting more progressive Labor women elected to parliament”, is furious that the report did not recommend an increase in the ALP's target for the number of women in parliament.
The ALP has had a relatively extensive affirmative action program since the 1980s. Under its rules, women should comprise at least one third of all decision making bodies. However, despite many female ALP members arguing that this would inevitably result in more powerful Labor women (and more women ALP members), the proportion of women ALP parliamentarians had barely changed by the early 1990s. Just a third of ALP members are women.
The response of many ALP women was to demand stricter rules. The 1994 ALP national conference significantly expanded the affirmative action program. Aside from ruling that one-third of union delegations should be women (except when, as is the case in most affiliated unions, the unions' membership is less than one-third women), the rules now specified that: “women are guaranteed a minimum of 35% of federal parliamentary seats held by the ALP when the party is in government, and the same minimum percentage of seats required to win government when the ALP is in opposition.”
Emily's List wanted Hawke and Wran to recommend that target be increased to 50%.
But affirmative action targets within the ALP are irrelevant when it does not fight for the liberation of women. Under the last federal ALP government, the ratio of female to male wages fell for the first time in two decades. The Labor government also began the chronic underfunding of childcare services that has resulted in childcare being almost unaffordable for low-income women.
Despite the majority of ALP members and voters supporting a woman's right to choose abortion, the ALP refuses to direct its MPs to support that right. This has much more to do with why women are less likely than men to support the ALP than how many female faces the party can promote into parliament.
Even Emily's List recognises that many Labor policies are not woman-friendly: it will only support ALP candidates that commit to a pro-choice position. However, it will not help their preselection, only campaign for them once they are preselected. So while the number of female parliamentarians has increased since the 35% target was implemented, this has not been a “feminist revolution”. Right-wing as well as left-wing women, anti-feminists as well as self-proclaimed feminists, have benefited.
The Hawke-Wran report also called for power to be taken away from local ALP branches in the preselection process, mandating consultation with the federal leader. This helps to smooth the way for inter-factional deals to control the party's candidates. It is likely that “affirmative action” will be used by all factions to get more of their candidates elected.
Affirmative action targets can be useful ways to ensure that women's voices are heard in progressive organisations. But to worry about such targets in the ALP — a party that attacks women's rights — will not do a thing to help fight women's oppression. Fighting Labor's anti-woman policies and campaigning for abortion, childcare and better pay (the stated aims of Emily's List) would be a far more helpful step.
BY ALISON DELLIT
[The author is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 21, 2002.
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