Extract from The Guardian
The Guardian essential report Essential poll
The March 4 Justice rallies could be the beginning of social and economic transformation
Thousands rallied at March 4 Justice demonstrations across Australia on Monday.
Last modified on Tue 16 Mar 2021 11.58 AEDT
For all those energised by Monday’s national March 4 Justice rallies the critical question for the morning after is whether it was simply an inspiring moment or the start of a transformative movement.
Streets full of determined women – and the men who support them – may feel like the beginning of a new chapter in gender relations but the prime minister appears willing to wait things out in the expectation the caravan will soon move on and politics will return to normal.
His position is based on the calculation that he will not lose his voting base in sticking to his position that acts of alleged abuse from the heart of democracy are isolated incidents and can be managed politically.
In this context, the attitude of women who make up his voting base will be critical. The Female Liberal Voter Who Might Change Her Vote on an issue of conscience has become an almost mythical feature of the Australian body politic.
In the guise of the doctor’s wife, she would wring her hands over the plight of asylum seekers and children in detention but stuck with John Howard even as he threw the truth overboard. Clad in pale blue-green, she would profess her support for climate action in the name of the children, before voting to axe the tax when the rubber hit the road. She rallied around Julie and Julia when they turned their back on Canberra, their ululating reaching fever pitch when Malcolm was rolled, but was quickly silenced in the face of the confected spectre of the Bill they couldn’t afford.
Now the Female Liberal Voter Who Might Change Her Vote is teasing again, with the latest Guardian Essential report suggesting they share the conviction that Australia is in a moment of reckoning for the treatment of women – but with some caveats.
We found a similar split in attitudes when asking respondents to make a forced choice between the PM’s defence of the rule of law and the need for higher standards of scrutiny to apply to the first law officer.
Yet those gender differences collapse when it comes to the general performance of the prime minister; while his general approval ratings have diverged markedly on gender lines across the electorate they remain consistently stratospheric with his base.
Looking at these numbers it strikes me that when we talk of the Female Liberal Voter Who Might Change Her Vote we tend to focus on the “female” part of the equation, invoking stereotypes of motherhood, sisterhood, shared compassion and empathy.
But the “Liberal” part of this identity may be even more important. As Liberal voters these women prefer a smaller role for government – managing the economy and then getting out of the way, keeping taxes low and eschewing any radical reform. In contrast, Labor is seen as inherently risky, the engineer that wants to challenge a status quo and build something better.
If this theory holds the challenge for broadening female support for real gender-based reform must be more than calling out injustice.
It starts with demonstrating to Liberal women voters that their personal experiences are part of a bigger picture; that assault, harassment and diminishment do not respect partisan divides; nor are they the end of the discussion. There is a bigger story: from superannuation skewed to the needs of male breadwinners to the way that economic policies designed to suppress wage growth inordinately impact women regardless of their voting history.
Second, it’s about demonstrating that designing new systems to deal with gender inequity is not just worthy but realisable. After a year when the government rose to a global pandemic and intervened in the economy for the common good, now may be a time to tap this sense of possibility.
Universal access to early learning that could provide women the choice between paid work and work in the home is one area of reform that was given a dry run in the pandemic and could become a feature of a more equitable society. More broadly, our newfound appreciation of the contribution of the caring industries to the nation provides a moment to consider their status and support in comparison to that given to the male-dominated extractive and construction sector.
Third, the conversation with female Liberal voters involves demonstrating how what seems like the Liberals’ “hands-off” approach to government is actually not so benign: that the government is walking away from its responsibility andthat contracting out and privatising services is a conscious choice. It’s about drawing consequences for those decisions – privatising domestic violence support, turning aged care into a for-profit industry, refusing to fund the social housing that would keep many vulnerable women off the street.
Most fundamentally, it involves agreeing on a common way of understanding this moment and naming it: our leaders are being asked to care about women and their experiences.
Right now, in the face of stories of abuse and diminishment, the prime minister simply doesn’t seem to care enough to establish an independent inquiry to deal with allegations against the nation’s top law officer, which have been strenuously denied by the attorney general who says they just “did not happen”. And Scott Morrison doesn’t seem to care enough to address the vast gender gulf within its own ranks. Not caring actually lies at the heart of the laissez-fare approach to government that anchored Liberal thought: the conviction that government is the problem, intervention is futile and the most worthy will rise to the top.
If harnessed, this could become a moment of social and economic transformation where the truths we have walked past for decades are finally named and addressed by a government prepared to start caring. I think many Australians are up for that proposition and that includes the Female Liberal Voter Who Might Change Her Vote, who are clearly ready to listen and just might decide the status quo is no longer worth voting for. Fully seeing these women is critical if we are to engage them.
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