Julia Gillard is urging the Labor party to never remove its 50% female target for parliamentary candidates despite surpassing it federally, warning there are forces – especially in the “toxic sewer” of social media – which can still drag women back.
In an interview to mark this month’s 30th anniversary of Labor’s controversial affirmative action rule, Australia’s first and, so far, only female prime minister reflected on the hope she expressed the day she left office in 2013, that it would be easier for the next woman who runs the country.
“I think some things are going to be easier and some things are going to be a bit harder,” Gillard told Guardian Australia.
She said having women as 52.4% of Labor’s parliamentary caucus will naturally make it easier for a woman to rise into leadership. It also helped that people generally – and the media in particular – were more conscious now of how women are treated in politics.
“I think journalists across the board are much more sensitive on these questions now than when I was prime minister,” Gillard said.
“So I think in many ways, all of that says it’s going to be easier. What has become harder is how dominant social media is in political messaging and political reporting. And as we know from all of the analysis, all of the statistics, the social media world can be a toxic sewer for women.”
Gillard points to the Coalition’s comparatively low female representation at 29.4%, or 25 of its 85 federal parliamentarians. She said it should “look at the scoreboard” and stop resisting a quota because “it works”.
“The affirmative action rule guarantees for us the very solid foundation, and that means that we can keep making progress in other ways,” Gillard said. “And you know, in this time of anniversary, I think we should be celebrating what that very strong foundation has given us, but we should also be advocating for its adoption right across the parliament.”
Gillard stopped short of advocating for more diversity quotas but said achieving one form of diversity naturally encourages others.
Although the affirmative action rule’s 30th anniversary is not until 26 September, federal Labor will mark it with a special gathering this parliamentary sitting week – and by introducing the legislation underpinning a pay rise for childcare workers.
Gillard argued that Labor is a more diverse and stronger party as a result of the affirmative action rule.
“And I know that the constant argument put against this is merit,” she said. “But if you believe, as I do, that merit for politics – merit generally – is equally distributed between men and women, then if time after time after time you’re disproportionately sending men to the parliament not women, then that doesn’t mean that you’ve selected the most meritorious people. There’s a bias in your system.”
Gillard welcomed new accountability standards for parliamentarians arising from the former sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins’ Set the Standard report on parliamentary workplaces.
“I’m a big believer that transparency matters, shining a spotlight matters, seeing what is wrong and then setting about fixing it,” Gillard said. She said the female quota rule had done the same within the Labor party.
But she was not prepared to endorse calls to extend the formal policing of behaviour into the chambers or outlaw robust debate.
“Look, I’m not one who can, with a straight face, be the advocate for a kinder, gentler parliament,” she said. “As you know, when I was in parliament, I used to give as good as I got.”
Gillard, whose 2012 “misogyny” speech attacking then opposition leader Tony Abbott has become emblematic of women’s political resistance, said one of her objectives had been to show that a woman could “thrive in – indeed, you know, dominate – a raucous parliamentary chamber, that these skills were not somehow skills that only men had, that women could do that too”.
But she said internationally, there were now demands for different political styles and kinder, more empathetic leadership. “I think ultimately those debates will tell on parliamentary structures here and around the world.”
Gillard reflected on the battle within Labor to cement the affirmative action rule in its 1994 platform and, in variations, ever since.
“Women were on a march from being, you know, outside the power structures of the party to the inside of the power structures of the party,” Gillard says of the lead-up to that controversial decision.
Gillard was elected in the safe seat of Lalor in 1998. The then lawyer was defeated for preselection in the safe seat of Melbourne by Lindsay Tanner before the 1993 election.
Gillard was among the network of Labor women who lobbied to secure support for what was initially a mandatory quota of women being preselected in 35% of winnable seats by 2002 and would become, in 2012, a requirement that at least 40% of candidates be women and at least 40% men, followed in 2015 by the target of 50% female representation by 2025.
Even right before the vote at the party’s 1994 national conference at Hobart’s Wrest Point casino, and with the strong advocacy of the then prime minister, Paul Keating, victory wasn’t a certainty.
“There were still many senior factional figures who were opposed to it, who thought it would tie their hands in preselections, didn’t see the need for it, who were putting the case that, you know, it would be a distortion to merit – whilst, of course, not realising that continuing to disproportionately preselect men and not preselect women, is, and of itself, a distortion to merit,” Gillard recalls.
“So all of these arguments were still being put. I mean, as we got closer and closer to the debate, we were more and more confident it was going to be carried.”
When it was, women flooded on to the conference floor in jubilation.
“That exuberance when it happened was genuine, a sense of, ‘Wow, finally, it’s done.’”
