and ain't i a woman?: Right-wing women

June 24, 1998
Issue 

and ain't i a woman?

Right-wing women

Whether we like it or not — and we definitely don't — Pauline Hanson is making political history.

Her media-enhanced image as the ordinary "fish and chip shop lady" who dared to speak her mind, challenge the major parties' monopoly on politics and represent all those "little people" hurt by economic rationalism is undoubtedly bolstered by the fact she is a woman.

The establishment media made enormous use of that fact during the Queensland election campaign: the glossy magazine covers and the large shots in the newspapers were consistently flattering, even glamorous.

But glamour was not the main message. The key message was that Hanson is trustworthy, that what you see and hear from Hanson is, unlike other politicians, what you get.

This is hardly a new message where women in politics are concerned. Professional politicians have recognised for decades that women are generally seen as more honest and trustworthy, and less ruthless, than their male counterparts. "Their public persona is a softer, more reasonable, more agreeable person" who is also "more loyal", was how one senior National Party figure, quoted in the June 13 Daily Telegraph, put it.

According to that article, the Nationals plan to pick strong women candidates for future elections in the hope that they will do better than men in countering Pauline Hanson.

This type of electoral opportunism is not confined to the National Party, of course. The Liberals, the ALP, even the Democrats have extracted every possible ounce of electoral gain out of their women candidates and, subsequently, out of their (few) women frontbenchers; they are usually given portfolios in which a "caring" face can smooth the way for vicious attacks on the most vulnerable — welfare recipients, children, indigenous people, students, the unemployed, the elderly and the majority of women.

The greater confidence that working people apparently have in women politicians is in part a generalising of the traditional sexist stereotypes, in which women are idealised as more nurturing and compassionate than men.

It is also, ironically, a direct result of the historical exclusion of women from equal participation in the hard-ball politics of government. There have been too few women holding the reins of government for women politicians in general to be tarred with the same dirty brush as their male colleagues.

The record of those women who have made it in parliamentary politics is, overwhelmingly, just as bad as the men's. Whether the Liberals' Amanda Vanstone and Jocelyn Newman, or Labor's Ros Kelly and Carmen Lawrence, or the Nationals' Flo Bjelke-Petersen, or the Democrats' (now Labor's) Cheryl Kernot, the women at the top of the parliamentary heap have been no more caring, trustworthy or loyal to women's interests (except their own) than the men in their parties.

Where they have not themselves led the attacks, they have remained silent, unwilling to jeopardise their personal careers by criticising, let alone breaking from their male faction or cabinet leaders.

Opinion polls since the mid-'70s have indicated that women do tend to vote for female politicians in preference to male politicians. This is not simply a case of women believing the stereotypes about female politicians.

It also reflects the persistent consciousness among women that their sex has a right to equality which has not yet been won. Getting more women into parliament is still seen, almost 30 years after the women's liberation movement raised mass consciousness about the sexism that pervades all political institutions, as a necessary and desirable goal. Many women will do their bit at the ballot box to help achieve it.

Feminism's demands for political equality were not, however, aimed primarily at ensuring more successful parliamentary careers for a minority of women. Rather, it aims to strengthen the representation in government policy and practice of the interests of all women — as waged workers, mothers, unemployed, students, retired. It aims to win justice for all women, not just equal opportunity for a few.

It is politicians' politics, not their gender, which counts for or against women as a whole. A vote for a man campaigning uncompromisingly in favour of full reproductive rights for women, affirmative action in work and education, the right of working women to organise and fight for their rights, child-care on demand and the right to good health and a living income for all is a vote for justice for women — much more so than a vote for any woman in the parties that oppose those policies.

By Lisa Macdonald

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