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DOI: 10.1177/0192512100214003

2000 21: 361International Political Science ReviewMarian Sawer

Parliamentary Representation of Women: From Discourses of Justice to Strategies of Accountability

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Parliamentary Representation of Women: FromDiscourses of Justice to Strategies of

Accountability

MARIAN SAWER

ABSTRACT. The 1990s ha ve witnessed a wide rang e of initiatives at n ation aland international levels to increase the parliamentary representation ofwomen. It is argued here tha t the underrepresentation o f women is an

inherently ambiguous slogan that has wrapped up in it quite differentfamilies of arguments, including the right to represent, the need forrepresentativeness, and the representation of interests. This ambiguity ispolitically powerful but may cause problems for the practice ofrepresentation. The article concludes that making a differencediscourse may lead to an o ver-empha sis on emb od iment an d a ne glect ofissues of accountability.

Key words: Accountability Institution-building Representation Women

Introduction

Women ha ve, in the 1990s in pa rticular, successfully politicized their ab sence fromparliaments an d challenged the legitimacy of m ale-dom inated decision-making. Itis perhaps paradoxical that this has occurred at the same time as widespreadquestioning within acad emic feminism o f the usefulness of the ca tegory woman .Despite this questioning of collective identity, the issue of the representation of

women has now been taken up at every level of the political system, whethersubnational, national, regional, or international. At the international level actionplans are dra wn up by bodies such as the In ter-Par liamenta ry Union ( IP U) as wellas by the U nited Nations (U N) Co mmission on the Sta tus of Women .

In demanding the presence of women in parliament, activists have drawn onthe rich a mbiguity of political langua ge. For example, there h as been much ta lk ofunderrepresentation of women, which has blurred the distinctions between

Internati onal Poli ti cal Science Review (2000), Vol. 21, No. 4, 361380

0192-5121 (2000/10) 21:4, 361380; 014840 2000 Intern at ion al Polit ical Scien ce Associa tionSAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

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representation of interests, the representativeness of th e legislature, an d the eq ualright to act a s a representative. The slogan of und errepresentation is inherently

ambiguous, suggesting that the presence of women will also serve the goal ofrepresenta tion of women as a collectivity.

Justice arguments abo ut womens equa l right to participate in public decision-making slide quickly into arguments about the relevance of embodiment to theway representation is conducted (the civilizing effect) or to what interests, values,and experiences are represented. For example, the Beijing Platform for Action(1995: para . 181) states that Women s equa l participa tion in decision-making isnot only a demand for simple justice or democracy but can also be seen as anecessary condition for womens interests to b e taken into account.

Equal opportunity arguments also quickly turn into symbolic arguments. Theseare of two different kindsone stressing the effects of the presence of women inparliament on the status of women outside, and the other stressing thesignifican ce of representa tiveness for th e legitimacy of political institutions.

The first symbolic argument, that the presence of women in parliamentincreases respect for women in society, is also associated with a motivational orrole model argumentthat the visible presence of women in public life raises theaspirations of other women, the girls can do anything effect. Some havesuggested this is one of the most important functions that women legislators canperfo rm ( Bur rell, 1994: 173).

The second and very different symbolic argumen t th at is also wrapped up in t heslogan of und errepresentation is that of institutiona l legitimacythe idea that thelegitimacy of political institutions will be undermined if significant sections of thecommunity appear to be locked out of them. This in turn assumes the politicalmobilization of group identity, in this case gender identity. Such mobilizationcurrently falls short of, for example, refusal to obey laws passed by male-dominated legislatures. There is no campaign of civil disobedience or refusal topay taxes comparable to the campaigns associated with the militants of theBritish suffrage movement befor e World War I. The slogan of un derrepresentat iondoes not q uite have the power of votes for women.

The different kinds of arguments wrapped up in the slogan ofund errepresenta tion a re summa rized in Tab le 1.

362 International Poli ti cal Science Review 21(4)

TABLE 1. Meanings of Poli ti cal Representati on.

Representation of . . . interestsideas / valuesperspectivescollectively mediated experiencescorporeal experiences

Representativenesssymbolic arguments . . . e ffec ts on sta tus o f group

effects on aspirationslegitimacy of institution

Equal right to representjust ice arguments . . . to part ic ipate in public decision-making

not t o be d iscriminated aga inst by structures of public lifeutility a rgumen ts . . . in crea se po ol o f ta len t

partisan a dvantage

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As Anne Phillips (1995) has pointed out, th e eq ual oppo rtunity argument forincreasing womens parliamentary representation is the easiest one to make. So

easy that it is often a ssumed rather than mad e, discussion prom ptly moving on tothe form s of direct an d ind irect and systemic discriminat ion which h ave preventedwomen playing an equal role in public life. Indirect discrimination may includefactors such as the electoral system or the structures of political work and politicalcareers, particularly the failure to accommodate family responsibilities or theprivileging of gladiatorial styles of politics. Identification of such barriers isrelatively stra ightfo rward , despite last-ditch att empts to revive argu men ts thatwomen have other or higher priorities in life than engaging in public decision-making.

While the equal opportunity argument is relatively straightforward, like mostjustice arguments it needs to be supplemented by utility arguments to convertpower holders to the cause. Such utility arguments may be in terms of doublingthe pool of talent from which legislators are recruited or increasing the electoralappeal of partiesproviding a new look for parties in the context of voterdisenchantment.

It is also common for equal opportunity arguments to be buttressed, as in theBeijing Platform for Action, by the suggestion that the election of women willmake a difference to the quality of parliamentary representation, introducingnew perspectives and increasing the level of empathy with issues of daily life. The

issue of authen ticity is raised, n amely whether tho se allocated the r ole of womanin society can ever be truly represented by those who have not shared theseexperiences.

It is easier to ra ise doub ts about th e ability of men to represent women tha n toput the positive case concerning whether womens interests will be betterrepresented by women. Even if agreement could be reached on the nature ofwomens interests or standpoints, a more representative legislature does notguaran tee more effective representation of such interests. Stan ding fo r is not th esame a s acting for (Pitkin, 1972). Indeed the presence of women m ay be used, aswe have seen in Austra lia, as an a libi for policies with a d ispropo rtion ate impa ct onwomen, such a s cuts to child care fund ing.

At this point it is common for the goal of increasing the number of women inparliament to be redefined as the goal of increasing the number of feministwomen in parliament, who will promote justice for women other than themselves.Ind eed it can be a rgued th at th is was always the aim, however wrapped up in eq ualopportunity discourse. For example, former Australian finance minister, SenatorPeter Walsh, complained that the tro uble with a ffirmative action was that you d onot end up with women. . .you end up with feminists (Sawer and Simms, 1993:185). So it is not just the representation of womens experience that is important,

but the feminist perspectives that derive from the collective mediation of thatexperience. Even given a feminist agen da, there is the question of to what extentwomen can affect dominant political values while their numbers remain at tokenlevels.

This article explores the discursive and organizational strategies used in thecampaign to increase womens parliamenta ry representation, using th e Australianexperience as a prism through which to view this international phenomenon.Indeed the interrelationship between action at the international and nationallevels, mediated by multilateral organizations and womens international non-government organ izations, is one of t he th emes of the article. The subject mat ter

SAWER: Parl iamentary Representat ion of Women 363



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goes beyond strategies to remove barriers to womens presence inparliament, tolook at institutional and other strategies to increase the collective influence of

women onparliament and to increase the accountability ofgovernment for thegender impact o f policies and program s.It should be n oted here t ha t Australia h as a Westminster system o f responsible

government, deriving from the United Kingdom but complicated by federalismand strong upper houses at both national and subnational levels (the States).Australia has always been prone to electoral experimentation and employs anumber of different electoral systems, characteristically using a form of pro-portional representation (PR) for upper houses and a single-member electoratesystem with preferential voting (the alternative vote) for lower houses. Because ofthe d ifferent elector al systems there are bo th Westminster majoritarian element s

an d co nsensus elements, as will be n oted furth er below. An h istoric two-part ysystem, mad e up of the Australian La bor P arty on th e one h and and a conservativecoalition on the other, has been diluted by the appearance of minor partiesholding th e balan ce of power.

The article begins with the issue of the relevance of the goal of parliamentaryrepresentation given the forces of globalization on the one hand and the longstand ing femin ist distrust of man -made po litical institution s on t he ot her. It moveson to deal with the interplay of sameness and difference discourses in thestrategies to increase womens presence in parliaments. It then explores the

leverage on the issue provided by multilateral organizations and donor agenciesand the range of practical strategies involved, including electoral reform andparliamentary and party strategies. The article then examines strategies toincrease womens collective influence, using Australian examples from differentwaves of th e womens movement. Dilemmas of representation are also considered,including competing identities and loyalties and the pressures arising from theprofessionalization of political life. The article concludes by looking at the issue ofaccounta bility for gender o utcomes and mechan isms for achieving it.

Relevance of Parliamentary Representation to WomenThe strategies to increase womens presence in parliaments adopted all over theglobe as part of th e implementation of th e Beijing Platform of Action embod y theassumption that parliaments remain an important sphere o f d ecision-making. Thisis despite the effects of globalization and the leaking away of power from n ationa linstitutions under th e pressure of globa l market forces and closed-do ormultilateral trade and financial negotiation. Indeed some would argue that theincreased presence of women in na tional pa rliaments signals the decreased powerand relevance o f the latter.

The q uestion o f the relevance o f parliamenta ry representation to women is alsolinked to the historic ambivalence of womens movements concerning repre-sentative democracy and the party system on which it rests. This ambivalenceman ifested itself in the man y non-party organ izations created in the a ftermath ofsuffrage to encourage womens active citizenship without being drawn into thecompr omised world of man-made party politics.

In the last thirty years this ambivalence has again revealed itself in the turn toparticipatory rather than representative models of democracy within womensorganizations themselves. On this view, organizational hierarchies and specializedrepresentational roles reinforce the subordination which womens groups are




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seeking to redress. Influencing representative politics without mirroring its formsbecomes a complex task, often mediated in Australia, as in Canada, by

bureaucratic bodies responsible for funding advocacy groups and ensuringwomen s perspectives are represented in po licy-making.The ability of extraparliamentary bodies to represent womens interests has also

come under scrutiny. Discursive shifts have been occurring in English-speakingdemocracies which reframe womens organizations as special interest groupsunrepresentative of ordinary women. The process whereby collective identity isgenerated and collective interests identified is seen as itself setting womensorganizations at a remove from those women whose experiences have not beenmediated in this way. Politicians and bureaucrats who distrust the collectiverepresentation of women tr y to reach a round it through non -deliberative market

research.

Sameness and Difference Arguments

As we have seen above, the justice argument about womens absence frompar liament s is relatively easy to m ake. Women should h ave equa l oppor tun ity toplay a role in p ublic decision-making o r to pu rsue political careers. The righ t ofwomen to participate in public life on an equal basis with men is set out in anumber of United Nations instruments, notably Article 25 of the International

Covenant o n C ivil and Political Rights ( ICCPR) a nd Article 7 of the Co nvention onthe Elimina tion of All Form s of Discrimination Again st Women (CEDAW). Thisargument does not rely on women making a difference to public life. It simplyassumes, like all equal opportunity arguments, that talent is not confined to onegender and that the absence of women from parliamentary positions is aconsequence of d irect or indirect discrimination.

The justice argument for women having equal opportunity to participate inpublic life is a good argument for mobilizing support amongst women andsympa thet ic men. As noted ab ove, to convert power-ho lders utility arg umen ts arerequired as well. These may be in terms of d oubling th e pool o f talent from which

legislators are recruited or, closer to home, in terms of increasing the electoralappeal of political parties. Electoral competition m ay be bro ught into play whereone party ha s significantly increased its female parliamenta ry representation (thecontagion effect).

Difference arguments may be of various typesthey may assume that womenhave different a nd conflicting interests to men, o r tha t women ha ve different andenriching perspectives, both deriving from the different social roles of men andwomen. D ifference ar guments may encompa ss the view that women, part icularly ifthey achieve critical mass, will bring a different way of doing politics as well as

different policy perspectives. It is suggested that womens family roles translateinto a n approa ch to politics based more on consensus-seeking a nd consultationan d less on power-bro king an d h ead -kicking. This appro ach is linked to th efeminist con ception of power as capacitydeveloping the power in self an d othersto make changes, rather than exercising power over others. This lends itself to arole of being an active mentor for other women (not just being distant rolemodels). Embodiment is seen as relevant to the way representative roles areperformed and to a preference for transformative rather than transactional(machine politics) models of political influence.

Survey research exploring the attitudes of both legislators and voters towards




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women politicians reinforces this view of the relevance of gender. In Norway, forexample, women po liticians have been found to have a man da te of difference in

the eyes of their parliamentary colleagues (Skjeie, 1998). In Australia commonfindings are that women are seen as more altruistic and oriented towardscommunity service, while men are seen as more oriented towards power andcareer. There is also a gen eral percept ion, picked up in focu s-gro up research, th atwomen in politics are much more likely than men to understand the stresses ofcombining work and family roles (NSW WCC, 1995; OSW, 1992). My own interviewswith parliamentarians suggest that women in politics have a differentunderstand ing of representa tion, placing more stress on consultative processesand less on the judgement of the legislator (Sawer, 1998). In addition, it is acommon finding in studies of parliamenta ry representation that women are more

oriented to constituency roles than their male colleagues, although this is alsoinfluenced by the marginality of their seats.

The politicization of womens absence has been helped along by the currentdisrespect for parliamentary institutions and by the idea that women will do itdifferently. The televising of parliament has exacerbated community rejection ofthe aggression and confrontation formula of the old order (Cameron, 1990). Aclear majority of voters in Australia believes that an increased presence of womenwould improve parliamentary behaviour (Saulwick, 1994). However, womenparliamentarian s have found it is har der to ch ange th e gladiatorial style of politics

than to introd uce new policy agend as (Brough ton a nd Zetlin, 1996).Gendered differences in the way politicians do politics are compounded bygendered representations of politics. Representations of politics in the mass mediafocus heavily on what for mer Australian Democra ts leader Janine H aines termedthe ritual stag fights staged in parliamentary question times. Other, morecon sensus-seeking for ms of politics, such a s are foun d in pa rliamen tary committeework, do not offer the confrontational images on which the electronic mediathrive. So representations of politics are often limited to an exaggerated form ofmasculinity, with which man y men are also uncomforta ble (Sreberny-Mohamma diand Ross, 1996).

Occasionally there will be a focus on a woman who adopts or adapts to theconfrontational style expected in Australian politics but these transgressive imagesdo not amoun t to a m ore gend er-inclusive representation of politics. Neither do esthe sexualisation of fema le politicians such a s Cheryl Kernot, fo rmer lead er of theAustralian D emocrats an d more recently a La bor Pa rty front-bencher. At th e timeof her change in party allegiance she was widely depicted by cartoonists as pursuedby amorous suitors and bed-hopping. When h er recruitment by Labor led to th erevival of that partys electoral fortunes, a story about a love affair she had beeninvolved in 21 years previously was given fron t-pag e trea tmen t in t he n ation al press

(The Austral ian, 15 Decem ber 1997). In o ther words, embo dimen t is always seen a srelevant for the female politician while the male politician has found it easier tobe accepted as a disembodied political agent. This is despite, or because of, theno rma tive ma sculinity of political styles.

International Pressure to Increase Womens Political Representation

All over the world in the 1990s there has been an increased attention to the issueof women in pub lic decision-making. The issue has been ta ken up by a ra nge o f U Nbodies and highlighted in the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth




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World Con ference on Women a nd the na tional plans of action b ased upon it. Ithas also been taken up by bodies such as the In ter-Par liamenta ry Union and the

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Why has therebeen such a surge of interest in this particular a spect of th e status of women?On e catalyst may have been the rapid drop in th e parliamentary representation

of women at the global level, following the overthrow of communism in theformer Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (see IP U , 1997a). Another possibility isthat the issue of the political representation of women is seen as neutral inrelation to questions of economic distribution, whereas other feminist demandssuch as childcare and equal pay are seen as requiring public expenditure orintervention in the market incompatible with current globalizing economicagendas. As noted above, many also believe these same globalizing agendas have

mad e na tional pa rliaments less relevant.Regardless of the rea son for th is increased attention by internationa l bodies, it

has prod uced a useful reinforcement of domestic campaigns aroun d the issue. Asof December 1998 there were 163 countries that had ratified the U N Conventionon t he Elimina tion o f All Form s of D iscrimina tion Against Women (CEDAW) andhad correspond ing periodic reporting o bligations, including in relation to Article7 on womens equal rights in politics and public life. Up until now CEDAW haslacked an optional protocol under which individuals could bring forwardcomplaints to the treaty body (after having exhausted domestic remedies). This

avenue ha s been available under th e Interna tional Covenant on Civil and Po liticalRights, and New Zealand feminist Marilyn Warin g ha s explored the po ssibility oflodging complaints under Article 25 of this Convention.

Further national reporting obligations have flowed from the Platform forAction adopted by the U N Fourth World Con ference on Women in 1995. ThePlatform described womens equal participation in political life as playing apivotal role in th e general process of the ad vancemen t of women and prescribeda range of po sitive measures to achieve it. Anoth er importa nt internationa l playerin relation to parliamentary representation of women is the IP U , which providesthe basic monitoring information on trends worldwide (eg, IP U , 1997a). In 1994IP U ado pted a Plan o f Action to correct present imbalan ces in the participation ofmen a nd women in political life.

Another source of international pressure to develop programs in this area isprovided by multilateral and bilateral donor agencies (particularly those ofnorth ern European and Scandina vian coun tries). It is nota ble that overseas develop-ment assistance is a portfolio area that is often typecast as female and manywomen have had ministerial or parliamentary committee responsibility for thisarea. Un fortuna tely because countries such a s Australia a re no t in receipt of inter-nation al d evelopment a ssistance they miss out on accompan ying don or pressure.

Womens internationa l organ izations are yet an other source of support forinitiatives to bring more women into parliaments. The International Institute forDemocracy and Electoral Assistance ( IDEA) is currently surveying organizationsthat promote womens political participation. Their sample includes thoseopera ting at th e interna tion al or region al level, such as the Cen ter for Asia-Pa cificWomen in P olitics, the O rganization of Women Pa rliamen tar ians from MuslimCountries, Parliamentarians for Global Action and the South Asian Network forPo litical Empowermen t of Women (Kara m, 1998: 223).

In Australia the increase in activity around parliamentary representation ofwomen was signa lled in 1992 by the forma tion o f the n on -governmen t Women




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into Politics Coalition. The following year the Ministerial Conference on theStatus of Women , representing Austra lian and New Zealand ministers,

commissioned research, while parliamentary enquiries into the subject were set upin the fed eral an d Sout h Australian p arliam ents. Women s Advisory Cou ncilsaroun d th e country and th e Office of the Status of Women in Ca nberra pro ducedhow-to manuals while centenaries of womens suffrage in South Australia andWestern Australia provided ad dition al momen tum.

Electoral Reform

The Beijing Platform for Action included, among specific actions to be taken bygovernments, the need to review the differential impact of electoral systems on

the political representation of women in elected bodies and consider, whereappropriate, th e ad justment or reform of th ose systems (para . 190D). In reportingon implementation of the platform in 1997 the Australian government avoidedthe issue of the d emon strable disadvan tag e to women po sed by single-memb erelectora tes, still the usual electora l system for Australias lower ho uses.

Electoral reform to ensure the more adequate parliamentary representation ofwomen and the political styles with which they are more comfortable has longbeen an interest of the Australian womens movement. In 1898 Catherine HelenSpence was campaigning for proportional representation ( PR) and appealing to

the new votersthe women of South Australia and of New Zealand, to changeneck-an d-neck competition fo r all or noth ing, into pea ceful co-opera tion (Spence, 1898: 8). The peak advocacy body between the wars, the AustralianFederatio n of Women Voters, patien tly pursued th e goa l of PR .

Much evidence has been accumulated in Australia, as elsewhere, showing theadvantages of PR in ach ieving the representation of women and minorities as wellas more consensual styles of politics (Rule and Zimmerman, 1994). In NewZealan d th e replacemen t of an electora l system ba sed purely on single-memb erconstituencies by the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system in 1996 saw asignificant increase in the representation of women, Maori, and Pacific Islanders

(Sa wer, 1997).With PR the parties have an incentive to present a balanced ticket that appeals

to different sections of the electorate. There is also pressure to provide places fordifferen t intra -par ty element s, includin g womens sections. PR systems also make itmuch easier to introduce quotas than where there is only one place to be filled.Once one party has introduced a quota there is a contagion effect on otherparties arising from electoral competition (Matland, 1998).

While district magn itude is an importan t variable affecting th e representat ionof women, the Australian womens movement has favoured the HareClark system

of PR rather th an a party list variant.1

This reflects the longstanding distrust withinthe organized womens movement of political parties and hence forms of PR thatincreased th e power of parties rather th an voters.

While Australia makes greater use of proportional representation than mostoth er Westminster-style coun tries (using it in six of its fifteen h ouses of pa rliamen tand in much of its local government) and has been using it for more than 100years, there is considerable distrust of it b y major pa rties. This distrust is based onthe effects of proportional representation in removing the bias against minorparties from the electoral system. Ensuring a closer fit between votes and seatsreduces the possibility of clear majorities in parliament and increases the need for




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major parties to negot iate with minor parties, themselves often led by women ( forexample, four of the six federal leaders of the Australian Democrats over the last

twenty years have been women).In Tasman ia, the nu mber o f seats per lower house electora te was redu ced in1998 from seven to five as a result of major party desire to get rid of a minor partyled by a woman ( the Tasmanian G reens) that had been holding th e balance ofpower. This meant a reduction in the representation of women, both as a result ofreducing district magnitude and of reducing representation of a feminized party.It also signalled a return to a majoritarian style of politics rather than theconsensual bargaining style which has suited women party leaders.

Parliamentary StrategiesAs Carole Pateman (1989) has pointed out, women have been differentiallyincorporated as citizens, meaning that their primary obligations as citizens havehistorically been con strued a s being in the private ra ther th an the public realm. Inother word s, women h ave been expected to put their fam ilies before fame, or theirdomestic duties before service to the broader community. Political parties haverescued women from the kind of serious interruption to domestic duties thatmight be cau sed by preselection for safe seats. It is on ly in th e last twenty years tha tthere has been real discussion, let alone action, on how public life might be

changed to accommodate family responsibilities. Prior to this, womens familyresponsibilities were construed as insuperable barriers to equal participation inpublic life.

Instead women achieved a token presence and, as we have seen, seriousconstraints are imposed on token representatives of difference. This means that solong as women parliamentarians come under great pressure to behave ashonorary men and so long as their male colleagues roll their eyes or groan whenissues of special concern to women are raised, the representation of women is verydifficult. It has been suggested that the shift from being a small to being a largeminority (critical mass) is required before women can bring about a change in

political cultu re ( Kanter, 1977; Da hlerup, 1988; Tho mas, 1994).The Australian evidence appears to support the proposition that it is when

women move from being a small to a large minority in parliament that womensissues become interesting ra ther th an dismissed a s marginal an d m arginalizing fo rthose who raise them. Con tent a nalysis of Senate debat e in Australia indicates thissea change. Senators are elected by PR and have included a much higherprop ortion of women tha n th e Ho use of Representa tives with its single-memb erelectorates. An issue such as violence against women has been raised three timesas often in the Sen ate a s in th e H ouse of Representat ives in th e period 198193.

The Senate is also characterized by the kind of multiparty negotiationchara cteristic, as noted above, of cha mbers elected by PR . Wom en usually perceivethemselves as doing less well in the adversarial chamber politics characteristic ofmajorita rian Westminster systems, conten din g, for ex amp le, with a ho stile wall ofsound from the b enches on the oth er side. Even if they do thrive on con fronta tionthey will be subjected to the sexual double standard and convicted of gender-inappropriate behaviour.

On e pro position is tha t th e ph ysical org an ization of Westminster-style ho uses ofparliament itself encourages masculine styles of politics, with the rival teams linedup facing ea ch oth er. Cha mbers where parliamenta rians are seated by region, as in




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Sweden, or by lot, as in Iceland, may mitigate the pressure towards aggressivecon fron tat ion. The new Scottish parliam ent will have a ho rsesho e-shaped

deb atin g chamber, designed t o be less ad versarial tha n Westminster (The Times,16 January 1999).Women pa rliamentarians tend to feel more a t home in more intimate forums

such as provided by parliamentary committees. This is another area, however,where explicit strategies are needed for women to achieve equal voice. Forexample, Australias response to the Inter-Par liamenta ry U nion questionnaire onimplementation of the Beijing Platform of Action and the IP U Plan of Actionrevealed tha t although there was a significant increase in the num ber of women infederal parliament a fter the 1996 election, the n umber of women acting as chairsor d eputy chairs of parliamenta ry committees actually fell by half.

Not only the structuring of physical space but also the conditions of politicalwork are also freq uently described a s constituting ind irect discrimination a gainstwomen. That is, parliamentary arrangements assume that parliamentaryrepresentatives are not at the same time primary carers for family members.Ind eed po litical careers have been regarded in the pa st as typically a two-personcareer, where the incorporated wife not only takes over full responsibility for thecare of the family but also stands in for the representative, particularly inconstituency roles. The role of the incorporated wife was given recognitionthrough the pr actice in the British Conservative Pa rty of interviewing the wife as

well as the can didat e for preselection.Tod ay, recomm end ation s for childca re centr es, fam ily-friend ly sitting h ours an dincreased tra vel for family members have become stand ard in propo sals to reduceobstacles to womens access to parliamentary careers. While the Scandinavian andG erma n par liament s ha ve creches, this is unco mmo n in th e English-speakingdemocracies, including Australia. In Australia late-night sittings were limited inthe fed eral pa rliamen t in 1994, but b ecame less fam ily-friend ly aga in aft er acha nge o f governmen t in 1996. While it can b e argu ed th at lat e-nigh t sitting s inthe federal parliament shorten the parliamentary week and enable parlia-ment arians to return to their fa milies inter-state as soon as possible, it does not

have the same benefit for the fa milies of Canb erra-based parliamenta ry andpolitical staff. In Tasman ia the prem ier recently limited pa rliamen tar y sitting timesto 6:00PM , stating tha t later sitting hours were discriminating ag ainst women withyoung fa milies (Canberra T imes, 16 March 1999: 5).

Parliamentary standing committees found in European parliaments may alsohelp raise awareness of gender issuesfor example, committees on womensrights in the Irish, Spanish, an d European parliaments and on equa l opportunitiesfor men and women in the Belgian and Luxembourg parliaments. Suchcommittees have varying mandates, including in the case of the Belgian Senate

looking inward s at th e working of the pa rliamen t an d issues such a s fam ily-friend lysitting hours an d t he gen der b alance o f expert witnesses (CCEO , 1997).Con sidera tion s of ho w to make parliamen ts more women-friend ly must also

extend to how to facilitate access by women in the community to theparliamentary process. In Australia federal parliamentary committees holdhearings around the countr y, enabling women to pa rticipate without incurring thecosts of travel. When a Senate Committee inquired in 1995 into outworking in thegarment indu stry, where most employees are women from n on -English speakingbackgrounds, advertisements were broadcast on ethnic radio stations andsubmissions were taken through the telephone interpreter service.




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Party Strategies

The major parties are the main barrier to womens parliamentary representation

in the older democracies, ahead even of the electoral system or the nature ofparliamentary institutions (Lovenduski and Norris, 1993). It is they who areresponsible for what has been termed the gender gerrymander, the fact thatwomen are far less likely than men to be preselected for the safe seats controlledby such p art ies.

In recognition of the central role of parties in the underrepresentation ofwomen propo sals have been ma de, for exa mple by Women s Electora l Lobby, tha tthe federal government follow the lead of the Dutch government and fund equalopportunity officers for political parties, to develop and monitor appropriate

action. This has not happened and neither has the Australian governmentfollowed the lead of the Swedish government in funding womens organizationswithin the political parties. Nor has the IP U suggestion been taken up that publicfunding of political parties, which exists in four jurisdictions in Australia, be tiedto their proportion of women cand idates (IP U , 1997b: 5).

In Australia the party response to increased pressure for womensrepresentation has followed a similar pattern as in other countries. Parties of theleft have adopted quotas, while those of the right have preferred moreindividualist strategies such a s training an d mentoring program s. On e an omaly inview of conservative hostility to quotas has been the affirmative action built into

the structures of the conservative Liberal Party of Australia. This has an historicalexplan atio n. B etween the war s the Victoria-based Australian Women s Nation alLeague (AWNL) had the largest membership of any conservative politicalorganization. When Robert Menzies formed the modern Liberal Party in 1944,the AWNL leaders struck a hard bargain in return for merging their resourcesinto th e new org anizationhalf of all executive positions in th e Victorian LiberalParty up to the position of State President were to be (and still are) reserved forwomen.

The ALP ad opted a target in 1994 whereby women would constitute 35 percent

of all its parliamentary parties by 2002, with the sanction of overturningpreselections where this had not been achieved. State branches of the party havetaken d ifferent ap proa ches to affirmat ive action . In New South Wales, forexample, women candidates for preselection get a 20 percent loading on theirvote. Pred ictably Labor Par ty quota s were criticized from the right as patron isingto women or putting gender before merit. By contrast, a delegate to the ALPNational Con ference that ad opted q uotas described male-domina ted concepts ofmerit as: a bit like testing people for preselection according to how far they cankick a football or how well they sing bass baritone (Broad, 1996: 82). PrimeMinister Pa ul Keating supported q uotas by drawing on t he utility argument of th e

need to har ness the ta lents of all people in the community.Adoption of quotas did not put an end to resistance to women within the party

or to associated fears tha t on ly tam e women loyal to ma le-controlled factionswould ever benefit. Concerns over the influence of such machine politics have ledin two different directions: on the one hand to exit and on the other to renewedefforts to achieve voice. The most conspicuous example of exit was the departurein 1995 of a number of prominent Labor women from the Queensland Branch ofthe La bor P arty to create the Australian Womens Party. At the launch o f the pa rtyits founder said: In the past 100 years weve been working inside the mainstream




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political par ties tog ether with m en. Where h as it got us? Not very close to equ ality(Couri er-Mai l, 12 August 1995).

The new party was dedicated to constitutional change to achieve equalrepresentation of women in all parliaments. One of its candidates became anelected delegate to the Constitutional Convention held in 1998 to consider achange t o a republic (Austra lia is still a con stitutiona l mon arch y). She said: Wetend to arrange our representative democracy around location, that is, all theelectorates are about where you live, your geography, but not much about yourgender and went on to explain the profoun d effect that gend er was likely to ha veon life, proba bly more profoun d than location ( Kelly, 1997). At the C onstitutiona lConvention she suggested tha t the on ly other ch aracteristic that more profo undlyaffected life chances was in being ind igenou s or n ot. For this reason the Women s

Party supported reserved seats for indigenous Australians as well as convertingexisting single-memb er electora tes into elector ates of twice th e size, eachreturning both a male and a female representative (Hansard, 9 February 1998:366).

Other Labor women opted to continue the struggle from within the party, butusing a new orga nizational strategy. Led by former Victorian Premier Joan Kirnerand former Western Australian Premier Ca rmen Lawrence, they set a bout creatinga body independent of party control to provide financial and moral support toendorse party candidates who met certain criteria. This was modelled on EMILYs

List

2

set up in th e Un ited Stat es in 1985 to ra ise campa ign fun ds for pro-cho iceDemocra t women cand idates. The Australian EMILYs List bega n in 1997 end orsingLabor women candidates who were able to demonstrate commitment to equityand pro-choice goals. Candidates were asked what policies they would advocate tohelp people balance work and family responsibilities and in what ways they wouldsupport other women. Before receiving funding and campaign support,candidates also had to sign a separate questionnaire/declaration relating toabortion.

The Australian version of EMILYs List is an interesting initiative designed toassist the entry of feminist women into parliament and to hold them accountable

for upho lding eq uity commitments. It has been viewed a s quite threatening t o theparty hierarchy, which ha s attempted to neutralize it by establishing a rival La borWomen s Network und er part y con trol.

Separate Institution-building

EMILYs List is an exam ple of th e separate in stitution-buildin g in which po liticalwomen have been engaged since the 1890s. Separate institutions provide aframework for woman-centred d ebate a nd for the crystallization of claims on the

broader political system. They provide the possibility of practising a different kindof politics from that institutionalized by men. They also play a central role in bothsupporting and holding accountable the women who enter the male domains ofparliament an d local government.

In th e post-suffrage era, Laura Bogue Luffma n set out the ration ale of separat eassociations in terms of the need to give the political world the full benefit ofwomens distinctive contribution through associations acting with, rather thanunder, men: Associations free to make their own laws, think their own thoughtsand work out their own political salvation (Luffman, 1909). Such associationshelped women take up their full responsibilities as citizens, unlike existing




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political institutions where men invariably took charge and defined the terms ofdebate.

The next great wave of separate institution-building was in the 1970s, at whichtime women relied less on maternalist discourse (the special contribution thatwomen as mothers could make to politics) and more on a critique of the role ofpatriarchy in disempowering women. Women attempted to create prefigurativetypes of institutions that would pose an alternative to masculine hierarchies offunction, expertise and power. O f th e n ew organ izations, Womens ElectoralLobby (WEL) was the most directly oriented to exerting external pressure onparliamentary politics. Like its first-wave predecessors, WEL rated parties andcandidates on their knowledge of, and commitment to, issues of particularconcern to women. It was particularly successful in the 1972 election in placing

new issues on the policy agenda and obtaining rapid implementation after theelection of a reform government.

Although WEL is still active more than 25 years later, the collectivism anddistributed leadership characteristic of the new feminist organizations tended tolimit their scale and influence on public policy at the national level. In the 1980sad h oc coalitions were the most chara cteristic forms taken by attempts toinfluence the broader policy framework, and these were usually defensive incharacter. In the 1990s intensive efforts were made to create ongoing umbrellastructures that would give women a more effective voice in public policy while

retaining principles of distributed leadership. As Jill Vickers has said of acomparable development in the Canadian womens movement, it was motivatedby a desire to participate fully in public life, while still challenging its very shapean d und erlying logic (Vickers, 1989: 27).

Process continues to be seen as important a s outcomes and , indeed, a n essentialelement of empowering women. Interestingly, newly emerging sub-groups, suchas women fro m no n-English-speaking b ackgrou nd s, Islamic women , or womenwith disabilities, focused their representational claims on womens movementorgan izations rath er tha n o n pa rliament. When decrying th eir lack of voice it wasthe womens movement that was often blamed and it was to the bureaucratic end

of th e womens movement, such as the O ffice of the Sta tus of Women , tha t suchnewly emerging constituencies turned for recognition a nd financial support.3

Such newly emerging groups became networked with longer establishedwomen s grou ps in th e 1990s throug h th e institution-buildin g no ted a bove. Thecreation of fo rmal networking organ izations at th e initiative of WEL and other keyplayers facilitated strategic informa tion-sharing and the coor dination of input intogovernment inq uiries and consultative forums. The n ew information technologiesgreatly assisted such developments and organizations as apparently disparate asthe Coa lition o f Activist L esbians, Women sport Austra lia, and Australian Women

in Agriculture could be found signing off on each others submissions or policyinterventions. Feminist organizational philosophy, however, inhibited progressionbeyond the networking model to the creation of a more traditional form of peakbody authorized to make statements on behalf of member organizations (seeSawer an d G roves, 1994).

The bureaucratic representation of women, through agencies responsible forensuring womens perspectives are represented in the policy process, has beenan oth er importa nt form of institution-buildin g in Australia. Australia has alsocharacteristically seen such representation as requiring analysis of all policyproposals in terms of gender impact, rather than assuming that policy may be




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gender neutral or that economic policy is less importa nt in determining womenslives than welfare po licy (cf. C arroll, 1994).

It has been argued that such femocrats are acting for rather than standing forwomen. They are unrepresentative in terms of their class location, beingemployed in the primary rather than the secondary labour market and henceindep end ent of a m ale earn er. Yeatm an ( 1990) believes tha t this un-representative class location is balanced by the femocrat mandate of monitoringpolicy and programs for gender impact, which means a mandated concern for theeffect of policy decisions on women rendered economically vulnerable by theirsocial roles. Certainly femocrats have played an important role in fostering thedevelopment o f orga nizations representing women who would n ot ot herwise ha vevoice in the policy process and in legitimizing their participation in policy advice

and policy evaluation (Sawer and Jupp, 1996).

Representative Dilemmas

Cha racteristically the first women in parliament, a s beneficiaries of the womenssuffrage mo vement, were expected to b e representatives of women at large, in thesense both of standing for and acting for women. These expectations wereadditional to their responsibilities to their electorates and parties. Subsequentlythis representational role was not so universally accepted, either by women

politicians themselves trying to escape the constraints of gender identity or bytheir male party colleagues. As representatives of women, the careers of womenpoliticians were very circumscribed; gender stereotyping of parliamentary rolesmeant consignment to health and welfare areas. The desire to break out of theseroles and gain access to the more prestigious masculine portfolios or committeeassignments led to the disavowal of gender ( Im a politician not a woman ).

On e Australian study has found that the a rrival of th e new wave of th e womensmovement and the increased number of women entering Australian parliamentsin the la te 1970s, led to a renewed willingness on the pa rt of wom en MPs to identifythem selves as representin g women (Whip, 1991: 6). G rowth of th e women s move-

ment created a political base for women who spoke out on movement demandsand introduced feminist discourse into pa rliamentary debate.

Moreover, the influence of the womens movement extended into existingpolitical parties, most no tab ly into th e Labo r Pa rty in its coa lition-buildin g phaseof reach ing out to a chan ging electorate (Jupp a nd Sawer, 1994). The influence ofthe womens movement became even more evident in the policies and practices ofnewly emerging postmaterialist pa rties such a s the Australian Democra ts and theG reens ( Sawer, 1997). As in o ther Westminster systems, pa rty a ffiliation is a m orereliable predictor of stance on womens issues than gender, although gender is

also significant within that partisan framework (McAllister and Studlar, 1992;Con sidine an d Deut chma n, 1994; Norris, 1996; Erickson, 1997).At the same time a countervailing trend was beginning to appear, that of the

professionalization of politics. The consequences of professionalization includedthe reduced likelihood of community activism as a pathway to parliament forwomen and an increased likelihood of a background in law and paid party work.Politics as a professional career often meant party and factional discipline tookprecedence over other affiliations. International research has shown that it iswomen who have a background in womens organizations who are more aware ofgend er an d gend er-related issues (Tremb lay, 1998).




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Institution -buildin g such a s EMILYs List helps to provide a forum withinprofessionalized party politics where gender perspectives can be identified andprom oted . Women s caucuses within pa rliamen tar y parties serve a similarfunction. For example, the Federal P arliamentar y Labor P arty Status of WomenCommittee was created in 1981 and meets weekly when parliament is sitting. Itreinforces femocrat monitoring of gender impact of policy and has been singledout for its significance in bringing together women who would otherwise bedivided from each other by factional loyalties (Broughton and Zetlin, 1996). Asimilar pa rty committee does not exist to bring coalition women MPs together forcollective action a lthough they do m eet for dinn ers.

Even the early women MPs experienced the contested nature of claims torepresent women as a constituency. Edith Cowan, Australias first woman MP ,

epitomizes such contestation. Cowan was given credit for parliamentaryachievements such a s her private memb ers bill enabling women to enter th e lawand other professions and her lobbying for playgrounds, childrens clinics andmotherhood endowment. Her class perspectives, however, set her apart fromworking-class women on issues such as access of servants to the arb itratio n system.She also lost the support of longstanding feminist organizations through hersupport for compulsory notification of venereal disease.

Ethnicity and race are factors which, like class and ideological difference,complicate the representation of women. Edith Cowan was active in trying to

improve post-arr ival services for imm igran ts coming to Western Austra lia in the1920s, but while she recognized the traumatic character of the settlementexperience, she sha red mu ch of the culture of th ese British immigrants. Tod ayimmigrant women from much more diverse backgrounds are staking claims forrepresentation on t he ba sis of experience an d perspectives that cann ot be sharedby women raised, like Edith Cowan, in the dominant culture. Parliamentarianssuch a s Helen Sham -Ho in the NSW Legislative Coun cil or Pa nsy Won g in th e NewZealand House of Representatives articulate multiple political identities, includinggender, ethnicity, an d party. In the ca se of Sham-Ho , ethn ic identity took priorityover party loyalty and she left the Liberal Party over its failure to take a sufficiently

strong stand against racism.Ind igenous women who were part of th e new assertion of ind igenous rights and

identity in the 1960s and 1970s were often chary of public identification withfeminism, prioritizing racial over gender iden tity and fea ring the consequences ofexposing issues such as do mestic violence within their comm unities. Tod ayindigenous women are more assertive in articulating gender issues and inensuring their own perspectives are represented in forums such as the agenda-setting Women s Con stitutiona l Con ventio n held in 1998. On e of the a ims ofEMILYs List is to encourage indigenous women and women from diverse ethnic

background s to nominate for preselection.Many, although not all, women parliamentarians do express the view that theyhave a special role to play in safeguarding the interests of women, a view notnecessarily sha red by their m ale co lleagues (Tremb lay and Pelletier, 1995). Ma lepoliticians are sometimes resentful of the implication th at th eir own gend er mightget in the way of their ability to represent female constituents. This has become aparticularly sensitive issue in recent times with the publicizing of sexualhara ssment complaints or d omestic violence restraining orders taken out againstmale politiciansan unwelcome reminder of ma sculine emb odiment.

For these and other reasons womens organ izations still tend to look to women




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MPs to support their causes, expecting that they will have greater empathy withtheir concerns. Those representing women within the bureaucracy also look towomen MPs for help, when policy or legislative proposals are going forward thathave a disproportiona te impact on women.

On the other hand, women parliamentarians articulate the problems involvedin being ca lled upo n to represent a ll women, t o be the womens voice. This goesbeyond the additional representational burden involved and encompasses thedifficulty of representing the diversity of women. One response by politicians, asby femocrats, is the sharing of resources to assist womens groups to representthem selves. Women par liament arians in Australia, fam iliar with the shoestringnature of comm unity politics, are particularly likely to b e found sharing their faxand photo copier with commun ity groups as well as providing lobbying a dvice.

Channels through which groups representing women make inputs toparliament can also be strengthened in a number of ways as we have seen above,such as the establishment of standing committees with responsibility for womensrights or gender equality. All parliamentary committees can have impact onwomen added to their terms of reference, as in Sweden, and be encouraged totravel to take evidence from women.

Conclusion

It is parliamentarians who have been given the mandate to engage in legislativedeliberation and executive scrutiny and are therefore in a position to holdgovernments to th eir interna tional commitments to improve rather tha n d iminishthe status of women. Who will hold parliamentarians, whether male or female,accounta ble for their contribution to ad vancing th e status of women? It is the lackof accountability mechanisms which has been one of the major criticisms ofidentity politics and of the mirror theory of representation (Squires, 1996: 84).Discourses of difference assume too readily that those with certain characteristicsand related life experiences will act in ways inflected by those experiences. On theother hand, where accountability mechanisms do exist, as with reserved seats

elected by those who identify as indigenous peoples, this is seen as having thenarro wing effects of corporatism ra ther th an the bro aden ing effects of seeking torepresent diverse in terests and views.

I have already noted the significan ce of separate institution-buildin g forstrategies of accountability. One important aim of EMILYs List, for example, is tosupport the feminists it has assisted into parliament and to hold themaccountable. It is clearly not sufficient to assist feminists into parliament (let alonewomen per se). There have to be strategies to support feminists operating withinpolitical institutions where the institution al culture is an tithet ical to feminism. Theno n-par ty women s political orga nization s creat ed in th e immediat e post-suffrageperiod were very aware of this and could be relied on for messages of supportwhenever a woman parliamentarian spoke out against prevailing patriarchalattitudes. Such support involves monitoring the women who have enteredparliament a nd accounta bility is the other side of this coin.

I ha ve also no ted in pa ssing forms of accounta bility that apply both to men a ndwomen, such as the watching brief of womens caucuses within parliamentaryparties and strategies to encourage participation of women in parliamentaryhearings. The media are always an important component of accountability. Theannual Ernie awards developed by a feminist politician and held in the New




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South Wales ( NSW) Parliament are designed to attract widespread media interest.There are various categories of award, but the occasion spotlights things saidor d one b y politicians, whether male or female, that h ave most set back the causeof women. They are judged on the basis of the volume of booing from theaudience.

More serious forms of accountability include the consistent monitoring ofpoliticians an d issuing o f form guides by equa lity-seeking a dvocacy orga nization s.Such form guides have been pr oduced since the last century by organ izations suchas the Woma ns Christian Tempera nce U nion . Durin g this century the AustralianFederation of Women Voters continued th e trad ition of rating cand idates on th eirrecord in relation to womens rights and this role was taken over by WEL in the1970s. In a recent state election in NSW the female leader of the opposition was a

self-declar ed feminist with pro -cho ice and o ther co mmitm ents. Her ind ustrialrelations policy, however, involved further deregulation of the labour market,which would h ave been pa rticularly detrimental to women, and her part y engag edin a preference deal with a n anti-abor tion pa rty. For this reason WEL did notadvocate voting for a woman for premier.

The issue of accountability for representing women is an important one forthe discursive strategies discussed in this article. Clearly all politicians must beheld accountable for their contribution to improving gender equity, just asgovernments are held accountable through gender audit and internationalreporting mechanisms. As Phillips (1995) observes, there is the danger that if toomuch emphasis is placed on the relationship between embodiment andrepresentation this will reduce the pressure on all politicians to take responsibilityfor representing women. That is, a focus on embodiment or discursive strategiescentred on gender identity may be at the expense of considered strategies forgender accounta bility.

They also, as I have noted, run counter to the current concerns of academicfeminism with the fragmented and contingent nature of identity. Indeed politicalactivists sometimes describe themselves as getting little help from womensstudies departments. Despite such academic questioning of the naturalizing of

difference we cannot expect campaigns for the greater presence of women inpolitics to give up on making a difference discourse. There is too muchadvantage in suggesting to an electorate deeply cynical and apathetic abouttradition al politics that women will do p olitics differen tly. These discursive appea lshave great resonance because voters believe that women are more altruistic thanmen a nd more concern ed with human consequences of policy.

As we have seen, the ambiguous demand for the increased representation ofwomen h as been effective in mo bilizing support a nd achieving a rang e of institu-tional reforms. The impact of this discursive strategy has been strengthenedthroug h its inscription in interna tional instruments such a s the Beijing Plat form forAction. G etting from numb ers to accounta bility will be th e next step. It is a step thatwill be much harder in so far as the pressures on parliamentarians to forget socialequity in the interests of global competitiveness have never been greater.

Notes

1. Ha re-Clark is a quota -preferential form of PR in which the voter is able to choosebetween party candidates or vote across party lists. For example, a voter can choose tovote on ly for women cand idates, across party lines.




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2. EMILY is an acron ym for Early Money Is Like Yeast (it m akes dough rise) a sloga nmore appropriate to U S-style campaign ing tha n in oth er countries where EMILYs Listshave been established.

3. For example: Women with disabilities in Australia have traditionally been renderedinvisible by the womens movement and they have also been rendered peripheral by thedisability movement. It was for this reason that women with disabilities in this countrybelieved that they needed their own political movement ( WWDA, 1998: 1).

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Tremb lay, M. and R. Pelletier ( 1995). Que font-ell es en poli ti que?Sainte-Foy: Les Presses delU niversit Laval.Vickers, J. (1989). Feminist Appro ach es to Wom en in Po litics. In Beyond the Vote: Canadi an

Women and Politics(L. Kealy and J. Sang ster, ed s), pp. 1636. Toron to: Un iversity ofToro nto Press.

Whip, R. (1991). Representing Women : Australian Female Pa rliamenta rians on the H orn sof a Dilemma. Women and Poli ti cs, 11(3): 122.

WWDA. ( 1998). About Women with D isabilities Australia. C an berra : WWDA.Yeat ma n, A. ( 1990). Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats: Essays on the Contemporar y Austral ian

State. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Biographical Note

MARIAN SAWER is currently head o f the Political Science Progra m, Research Schoo lof Social Sciences, Australian National University. Her books includeA Womans Place: Women and Poli ti cs in Austral ia (with Marian Simms, 2nd edition1993), Sisters in Suits: Women and Public Policy in Australia (1990), andRepresentation: Theory and Practice in Australian Politics (coedited with Gianni




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Zappal, forthcoming). ADDRESS: Research School of Social Sciences, AustralianNational U niversity, Can berra, ACT 0200, Australia .[e-ma il: msawer@coomb s.anu.ed u.au]

Acknowledgements. With tha nks to two an onymous read ers and to Mano n Tremblay an d LisaHill for very useful commen ts.



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