A woman's touch
It seems that these days women can do anything. Cheryl Kernot can leave the Democrats, transform the Labor Party and possibly even become the next PM. Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja can exert her youthful charm as the probable next leader of the Democrats and win a whole generation of younger voters back to politics. Women can work their way to the top and make the political system more "caring" and "responsive" to community and women's needs.
Well, that's what the media and political establishment would have us believe. Since the infamous defection, we have been force fed a diet of how much difference a woman can make — especially when she belongs to the right social group.
None of the coverage has scrutinised the policies of Kernot and Stott-Despoja. Rather we're being regaled with what they "as women" can bring to each party. Neither of the two major parties is about to challenge this; both know full well that women politicians are generally perceived as somehow less politician-like than their male counterparts.
This focus on gender rather than policy is not only patronising but also feeds the notion that, because a tiny percentage of women have "made it", women's status is a great deal more advanced than it really is.
Kernot is standing for a lower house seat in Queensland, a state where the Labor Party has failed to honour its commitment to ensure that, by 2000, 35% of MPs are women. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on October 18 speculated that Kernot may be the "Barbie doll" to save Queensland Labor from more criticism over its reputation for not preselecting women.
But this is all really besides the point. The litmus test for whether a politician should be supported or not is his or her policies. In the cases of Kernot and Stott-Despoja, both have failed to defend women and young people.
Kernot had championed the Democrats being a "responsible" third party (in contrast to the Greens, which once threatened to block the budget). This basically meant ensuring the smooth functioning of the parliamentary process. Under Kernot's leadership, the Democrats voted for the government's draconian Workplace Relations Bill (albeit with modifications) and called for a "debate" around a GST, both of which will adversely affect the majority of women.
Stott-Despoja is lauded for taking up the fight over higher education funding cuts and student fees — policies which disproportionately affect women's access to education.
But last year the Democrats voted for increases to HECS, $2.3 billion in funding cuts and massive cuts to student income support.
In August, Stott-Despoja attempted to amend a Greens motion that the Senate support the student occupation of the finance building at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology against fees. She wanted the word "support" changed to "notes".
Stott-Despoja also participated in initial "consultations" on the new common youth allowance, and eventually allowed through a scheme which cuts all unemployment benefits for 16- and 17-year-olds, and enshrines all the worst aspects of Austudy and the youth dole.
Sexism is alive and well — within parliament and outside. For that to change, more than a woman's touch is needed. Sexism needs to be fought — including within the parliamentary structures — by both men and women with policies that break the restriction on the right of all women to participate fully in society, including in politics.
Such policies would include: the right to a decent job and equal pay for work of equal value; the right to affordable, accessible child-care; and the right to free education. Kernot has not done women any favours by joining the party which began the neo-liberal austerity drive that has since been accelerated under the Coalition.
Marina Carman
["That man over there say that women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?" — Black abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth at the second annual convention of the women's rights movement in Akron, Ohio, USA in 1852.]