Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 01/1997 by Marie Swain
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- The total membership of the New South Wales Parliament is 141
(99 seats in the Legislative Assembly and 42 in the Legislative Council). In
the 51st Parliament there are 29 women parliamentarians, which represents
20.5%. 15 are in the Legislative Assembly (15.1% of all Lower House seats), and
14 are in the Legislative Council (33.3% of all Upper House seats).
- In Australia women have had the right to vote and stand for
Federal Parliament since 1902. However it took two decades for a woman to be
elected to a State Parliament; four decades before a woman was elected to the
House of Representatives or the Senate; six and a half decades before a woman
was made a Federal Minister; eight decades before women were included as a
matter of course in Federal Cabinet; and nine decades before serious attempts
were made to ensure women participated to a greater extent in the political and
parliamentary process (pp3-7).
- Reasons given for the low participation of women in Australian
Parliaments are many and varied. These include: attitudinal barriers which
prevent women from putting themselves forward; negative perceptions of the
political and parliamentary process; the intense scrutiny given to women
parliamentarians and the portrayal of women politicians by the media. There are
also financial barriers which make running for office difficult and structural
barriers which hamper entry into politics. These include the preselection
procedures; the need to balance home and family responsibilities and the
problems posed by long sitting hours and lack of child care. Other factors such
as the type of voting system in use may also play a part in the extent to which
women are represented in Parliament (pp8-21).
- Arguments put forward as to why women should be represented in
greater numbers include: women make up half the population and should therefore
be represented proportionally; the democratic system would lose its legitimacy
if only one group in the community were seen to be represented; the focus of
the political agenda is broadened to include issues such as domestic violence,
women's health etc; women bring a different perspective to the political
debate; it is a more efficient use of human resources; greater involvement of
women may temper the way in which politics today is often conducted (pp22-26).
A number of ways have been suggested to increase the representation of women.
Some do not require wholesale change, for example, encouraging women to
participate in the political process. Then there are those which require
changes to the present system such as endorsing women in safe or winnable
seats; introducing "family friendly" parliamentary procedures and
premises; and setting up funds for women candidates. Finally there are
mechanisms such as implementing quota systems; weighting preselection votes;
reserving seats; direct appointment and so on (pp27-36).
- In 1994 the representation of women in the major parties was
fairly similar, with approximately 15% of the parliamentarians at the Federal
level and 20% of the parliamentarians at the State level. This situation looked
set to change when the ALP introduced a quota system to ensure women would be
candidates for 35% of winnable seats by the year 2002. However, following the
massive swing to the Coalition at the 1996 Federal election, there are now only
13 women ALP representatives (5.8% of all ALP parliamentarians) compared with
26 women Coalition representatives (11.6% of all Coalition parliamentarians).
While the increase in the representation of Coalition women is in part
explained by the swing, another attributable factor is the greater effort which
has been made to encourage more women to participate in programmes aimed at
educating and training potential parliamentary candidates. Quotas are not
supported by the Coalition parties. The smaller, newer parties have a higher
representation of women without appearing to have any special mechanisms in
place to achieve this (pp36-42).
- In 1993 Australia was ranked 35th out of 60 countries in an
international study on the representation of women in national Parliaments.
While our result (8.2%) was similar to that of the United States, the United
Kingdom and Canada, it fell way behind that of the Scandinavian countries which
achieved representation of between 30 and 40%. More recent figures indicate
that in 1996 the world average was 10.4%. Following the March 1996 election
women now make up 15.5% of the House of Representatives and 30% of the Senate
(pp43-47).
