Women in Politics

Have just finished reading “Getting Even:– Women MPs on Life, Power and Politics” by Anne Henderson. For a political afficionado like me, makes fascinating reading. My interest in politics was initially sparked by several years as a political staffer, which led to a period of party membership, and has been reinforced by the completion of a degree in Politics last year. For any woman with aspirations to a political career this book should be required reading. It is a very frank account of the difficulties women face in entering what is still a very blokey world. She claims that things have changed for the better, citing as examples the 1996 and 1998 elections in Australia which saw a significant influx of new women MPs into Parliament, a trend also seen in State Parliaments, however it is debatable just how much has really changed. What does appear to be a persistent trend, and I have read a previous book on this called “Media tarts: how the Australian press frames female politicians” by Julia Baird (great cover by the way) .. is the savagery with which women MP's are treated by the media, in comparison to men. Everything about them is dissected in brutal frankness from hairstyles, clothes, demeanour, speaking voice, partners or lack thereof, even empty fruitbowls! This just doesn’t happen to the blokes, many of whom quite frankly could equally do with a makeover in the hairstyle and dress departments. Why? Henderson suggests it’s because women by virtue of their gender are always going to be judged on the basis of their physical attributes and conformity or otherwise to prevailing standards of acceptable (read non-threatening to men) behaviour. Of course in any sphere women with ambition, power and influence often become targets of misogyny from not only men, but other less successful women in many cases.