Councillor Ingrid Jackson of Noosa Council recently shared an ABC Sunshine Coast Facebook post which took a look at all politicians (federal, state and local mayors and councillors) elected across the Sunshine Coast from Caloundra to Gympie.
The ABC post asked a very pertinent question: why were just four out of 40 representatives female? That’s only 10% and even by Australian standards (where generally one-third of elected officials are women), it’s very low.
So why don’t we have more female representatives from the Sunshine Coast in councils and parliament?
Here in Noosa the election of local independent MP Sandy Bolton against the incumbent LNP representative certainly stirred the pot last November, but Cr Jackson remains a solitary rose amongst a bush of thorns in Noosa Council.
Last week I had a good discussion with my older daughter, Zoe, who is about to make subject choices and start thinking about her future career. She had just been interviewed by Channel 7 about her efforts to make her school plastic-free, and I said she’d be good at being a presenter or director – something in communications. It happens to be my career too and I absolutely love it.
Zoe reflected for a moment and said no, adding that she’d been thinking about the issue a lot and thought Prime Minister might be more appropriate!
I said OK, of course you could do that if you work hard and you put all your effort into it, but you have to keep in mind the process of getting there.
There are frustrating layers of bureaucracy that make you sit through countless hours of extremely boring meetings. You need to be able to tolerate threats and derogatory remarks. You have little free time because as an elected representative you are always on call.
Furthermore, as you can never please everyone, there’s always someone pissed off with you and it’s hard to know who you can trust because some people will try to abuse your position of power. The list of constraints and challenges is long and it goes on.
“Wow mum, why don’t you tell me what you really think!”
Seriously, it seems like not enough good ever gets done because local, state and federal governments and the myriad of different departments keep waiting for others to make a move (and, when they do, often don’t like it).
In the meantime – as is the case in Noosa – facilities like the former TAFE institute can sit empty for years, abandoned boats rot on the river and it takes decades to ban things like plastic bags because someone else is supposed to take care of it. These are just some of the many cases I’m familiar with.
When good programs DO get some funding, the next election seems always just around the corner… the government goes into caretaker mode, a new party is elected not because they’re better but just because everyone was pissed off with the other party, all the departments get shuffled around and renamed, new plans are hatched and the programs that had just found their feet are left in the lurch while the machinery of government marches on to who-knows-where.
Our leaders somehow become followers relying on second-guessing the community in order to keep their jobs.
I think the lack of women in politics is part of a bigger systemic failure and I’m not sure how we can make it more attractive for women to participate.
I definitely think Noosa is run by a boys club not willing to give up the reins just yet – the lack of diversity is clear in the decisions that are made. Groupthink is alive and well. I take my hat off to Cr Ingrid Jackson and MP Sandy Bolton for giving it a go.
Personally, I couldn’t think of anything worse than going into politics – I’d rather be part of grassroots movements driving change from the bottom up – because change is something we seriously need right now.
I enjoyed reading the comments on the ABC post and have saved some of the good ones for posterity here on ON.
Thank you for your thoughtful post Desire. You have set me thinking about the effectiveness of grass roots action, about whether it can truly bring about change, or whether top down is more effective.
I think back to the heady days of my youth, of Vietnam protests, spending a year in San Francisco at the height of the ‘Flower Power’ movement, and the early days of the feminism and the women’s movement. In some ways we achieved cultural change that still has repercussions today, but that’s not the whole of the story. Like wage equality, the culture of our governance has hardly changed.
In my working life I started out as a provider working directly with communities and individuals. At ground level it’s easy to see where policies and service delivery can be improved, and like you I became frustrated with the layers of bureaucracy that stood between the status quo and making meaningful change. There are two ways to approach that frustration. One is to continue to work at grass roots level chipping away and being frustrated with the system. The other is to become part of the system, to work your way into positions where you have a real opportunity to influence things and make change. One way to do that is to stand for public office.
It IS harder for women than for men. Our governance is dominated by an outdated, clannish, combative culture that is alien to women. Like frustration with bureaucracy there are two ways to approach this –play the game as if you were one of the boys, be as aggressive and combative as the best of them, or, as our local member is doing, stand your ground, be the change, and chip away at the system. That’s really hard if you’re one amongst many, as is our lone female councillor in Noosa.
It seems that the problem is not so much that women don’t get elected, but that women just don’t stand for election. According to the article mentioned by Cr Jackson, when they do they are often more likely to be elected than their male counterparts. So the problem is how to get women to put their hand up for public office. Sandy Bolton is quietly mentoring and chipping away at this. I wonder if some of our local womens clubs like Zonta or View or CWA or even somewhere like Wallace House might think about supporting, encouraging and sponsoring female candidates.
My feeling is that we won’t see real change working outside the system.
Hi Judy, thanks for your thoughtful response! It’s great to hear your perspective from the early days of the feminist movement and Vietnam protests. My mum always taught me that patience was a virtue, something I’ve come to appreciate now that I have my own children. So maybe the political me is still blossoming and when my kids have flown the coop and I have time on my hands, I’ll take on the system from within!
In the meantime, I admire those who do stand and agree that there should be more support and encouragement for female candidates. I’ll make sure to mention the good points to my daughters as well… Zoe needs to do work experience soon, so perhaps Ingrid or Sandy could show her what politics is like from a female perspective…
Hi Desire, this is an important discussion but I’d prefer not to consider Cr Ingrid Jackson as a rose “amongst a bush of thorns” but more as a rose amongst other roses, just a different colour. As I said in my Facebook post, who’d go into politics if you cop abuse no matter what you do? I’d love to see a positive conversation, as Sandy Bolton has demonstrated and taught me, around our politicians. We can be angry and disappointed but about the topic, not the person. Now I’m the first to admit that I struggle to be positive about Trump but I promise to try harder.
Hi Trish, thanks for your comment. My reference to Ingrid as a rose amongst thorns is purely metaphorical – I don’t have any issue with any of our male councillors, they are all decent people dedicated to doing the best job they can. My discontent is with the system that has, for too long, favoured men and I think in the process we ended up with a very different way of looking at issues than if we had more females around the table. I too would like to look at the bright side of life, but there’s no point denying the shortcomings of the political system as it stands. It’s only through acknowledgement that we can then move on and fix the problem. And yes, fortunately we have some positive role models to show us the way.
Thanks for clarifying, Desire, and yes, I too would love to see more women in politics.
Knowing both Ingrid and Sandy pretty well, I think they are both in the mould for women entering politics. This is not to say they are in the same mould.
Sandy came from nowhere to be a councillor, narrowly missing out on the mayor’s job, to state member in around five years. With each try for power, she learned more about how political goals are achieved. Ambitious, she exuded charm and confidence in public while working away in voluntary community positions where voters saw her energy and street smarts. When Sandy secured first preferences from the other major candidates, it was generally recognised that her election was a foregone conclusion.
Ingrid chose to learn the political ropes as secretary of the NPA before cutting loose in a run for councillor. During campaigning, she chose to differentiate herself from other candidates with some differing opinions, and drew on career skills in management to exude self-assurance and poise. While Ingrid was the only female candidate elected, it should be remembered that Elaine Williams nearly made the cut.
Both candidates understood social media and ran flawless campaigns. But the achievements of both women is more remarkable because they succeeded outside the political party system without a party machine to support them.
As Desiré says, countless hours of boring meetings aren’t for everyone, although it could be argued that countless hours of efforts that go into child rearing could prepare you for this unfortunate aspect of politics. Being so much on call is surely a prime reason that younger women with families ignore a run for public office. Politics in Australia, generally, is certainly a men’s club, and this is partly because, historically, it has always been easier for men to dabble in party politics and to run for political positions. In the major parties, men often rose through the ranks of the union movement, business, and legal and other professions that they had a stranglehold on. This situation is changing as women fill more and more of these positions and I’d suspect more women in future would think of politics as a career for them.
Meanwhile, as Judy says, women work away at a grass roots level doing arguably more and being very effective. Like Judy, I grew up with anti-war demos, the conservation movement and alternate lifestyles, and I was always working with women. They were there in equal numbers to men. While, I am surprised that, 40 years later, women haven’t made it in to more positions of political power, evidence suggests the evolution of gender equality is measured in centuries rather than decades.
Thanks for your comment, Rod. I agree Sandy and Ingrid approached their campaigns differently and bring to the table different skill sets which is exactly what we need – more diversity; not only male to female but also people from different cultures and with different backgrounds and different experiences. This will lead to better outcomes for all rather than mates looking after mates…
Yay for Sandy, Ingrid, Jacinda Ardern and Larissa Waters! oh and not to forget Angela Merkel… Rod, thank you for a fab mansplanation on the topic. You should have seen my eye roll 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tszidfq32DQ
Hi Desire. If Zoe is interested, I would love talk with her about what it’s like and what it means to be a local councillor. It is a great privilege to be able to make a difference for the community. And the meetings are anything but boring. I find them absolutely riveting. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Ingrid
Thanks for the offer, Ingrid – I will talk to Zoe and let you know 🙂
I’m sure there are some discussions at the meetings that would be more interesting than others. It always surprises me how wide-ranging the issues are in local government and to be an effective Councillor you certainly need to stay on top of any new developments while also keeping in mind those that prefer to chug along with the status quo. It’s not an easy job, that’s for sure.
Bettina, calling my post mansplaining is as meaningless as me calling your posts womansplaining. And it’s sexist to boot. Eye-rolling is another put-down. I think contributors who have obviously put a lot of work into helping your site be meaningful and dynamic deserve better treatment. Just sayin’.
Hi Rod,
Thanks for your comment. The eye roll was a somewhat over the top, light-hearted and also self depreciating put-down by comparing myself to Angela Merkel – which Angela could possibly take offence with. I tried to inject some of the world famous German humor 🙂 and some things might have been lost in translation. I was commenting in haste, and you are right, you didn’t deserve that. Apologies. Let me explain in more depth where I was coming from:
Did you know that Angela Merkel is widely known as ‘Mutti’? This is based of course on her gender as well as her pragmatic attitude to crisis with her ‘Wir schaffen das’ motto (“We’ll manage this”).
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-election-angela-merkel-journey-from-madchen-to-mutti/
But her gender is also reason for hideous sexist abuse she copped similar to our own Julia Gillard and in a much smaller way I have experienced this here.
Your generalisation about ‘countless hours of efforts that go into child rearing preparing you for boring meetings in politics’ echoed perhaps unintentionally old fashioned attitudes about a woman’s role in politics being a supporting, nurturing one and not one of vision and leadership. Fortunately I think we are already moving beyond this. Women like Merkel, Bolton, Jackson, Adern, Waters are proving it. Having lived with those attitudes for most of my life triggered my theatrical eye roll. Seeing them still playing out in the Sunshine Coast are a case in point.
Your comment also begs the question How did men dominate the same system without that sort of resilience ‘training’? I don’t believe the sexes are all that different in their innate capacities, but the advantage men might have is that they have created this political culture and culture is learned and enforced over time. I think we can both agree, that it is desirable that politics become more accessible and easier to understand and communicate. Parliamentary language is alien to many. To make politics more accessible is a great and deserving challenge for those who wish to make a difference in that way. As Ingrid said ‘each to their own’.
On another note I found ‘Sandy was coming from nowhere’, and ‘Ingrid learned the political ropes as secretary of the NPA, before cutting loose’ were a tad condescending. But I don’t need to argue this for them – that would perhaps be ‘womansplaining’ (Is that a thing?). However it surprised me a little to hear you inadvertently calling the NPA a political organisation.
Rod, the NSRRA meeting itself and the report you wrote for ON were a great service to our community. It’s good for this sort of information to be accessible for future reference to make sense of it all and I believe this was the reason you posted it, when I encouraged you to do so. This is one of the reasons I too put much work into this site. I believe it’s a good thing. But it does not mean we can no longer have robust discussions or differences of opinion. I hope my explanation helps. My intention was not to be rude, so I thank you for telling me how I came across. Recovering laughter helped me regain my sanity through tough times of gross sexist abuse. I’ll try to dial down my cheekiness, but (like Merkel) can’t promise I’ll always succeed.
Regards
Bettina
Hi Bettina,
Thanks for your response. Communications between people who don’t know each other is always a fraught thing, but I’m always up for a discussion where wires get crossed. And, of course, we can have robust conversations and differences. I really do hate groupthink.
I know about child rearing since I was an equal partner in this endeavour and I think it has stood me in good stead for meetings! Certainly, it is always applied to women, but not women who didn’t raise kids. I still think in the case of our two female politicians, child rearing held up their political careers, but I shouldn’t have assumed this.
I think men in politics, especially those who have been there from a young age, come into political life at a disadvantage to women and men who have had greater life experiences. Yes, men built the political system, and it is this system which women have to adapt to. How often do you hear a successful female politician put down with, “she works well in parliament because she one of the blokes”.
Sandy’s rise through the political ranks has been meteoric, and that’s not a put down, that’s a compliment and a testament to her hard work and innate people skills. I think the NPA is indisputably a political organisation, and this has been demonstrated over the years. Of course, I don’t know if Ingrid would agree and I don’t know if she learned anything there, but I’d be surprised if she didn’t.
I’m supporting this site because I’m sick of all the crap on Facebook and sick of all the nastiness there, and I think that there’s so many topics that need serious debate in Noosa. I love it that we have the Council back in our hands, but I recognise that the small pond has lots of dangers lurking not very far beneath the surface. Plus, there is a political history here which defies belief and which I (sort of) don’t want to know about!
Anyway, love your work, and look forward to making more contributions.
Cheers, Rod
Welcome to the dark side Rodders!