Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
might be expected that they would be the ‘natural home’ of women voters. However,
women’s equality is just one issue considered by voters, and others may take
priority. 35 Women may also have been influenced by the ALP’s view of labour as a
right of the male breadwinner and of class solidarity as mateship. 36
In recent years, the gender gap in voting behaviour has narrowed. 37 From the
1960s onwards, there has been a gradual increase in the percentage of men voting
for the Liberal or National parties and agradualincreaseinthepercentageof
women voting for the ALP. 38 In 2010, with Julia Gillard – Australia’s first woman
prime minister – contesting the election, the gap was reversed; women were
supporting Labor more than the Coalition and more women than men were
supporting Labor. This shift was consistent with international trends, in which leftof-centre
parties were able to narrow and in some cases begin to reverse traditional
gender gaps that had seen them supported more by men than by women. 39 In the
2013 election, the gender balance shifted back so that roughly equal proportions of
womenandmensupportedLaborandtheCoalition,althoughwomenweremore
likely to vote for the Greens than men. In 2016, women were once again more likely
thanmentovoteforLabor(by7percent)andmorelikelythanmentovoteforthe
Greens (by 4 per cent). 40
The voting patterns of LGBTIQ+ people are much less studied. The Australian
Electoral Study, perhaps the key scholarly source of information about voting
behaviour and attitudes in Australia, does not ask about respondents’ sexuality and
only allows respondents to select ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ identification for gender (with
no option for ‘Other’, ‘Trans’ or ‘Non-Binary’). 41
Leadership
Scholarship on women in politics has shown that leadership is associated with masculine
qualities of toughness, single-mindedness and aggression. These qualities are
seen as undesirable in women, as well as – via the conventional double standard
– positive attributes impossible for women to fully embody. 42 Women politicians
are often punished harshly for transgressing norms of femininity or leadership
(constructed as mutually exclusive). Sinclair has drawn attention to the ‘power and
privilege reproduced in leadership and leadership research’, which ‘reinforces the
35 Curtin 2014.
36 Curtin 2014, 148.
37 Bean and McAllister 2015, 41–4.
38 Manning 2013.
39 McAllister cited in Manning 2013.
40 At the time of writing analysis was not yet available for the 2019 election.
41 McAllister et al. 2017.
42 Sinclair 2014.
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