Edith Cowan University Research Online ECU Publications Pre. 2011 1996 International review of women and leadership: Special issue, volume 2 number 1: women and politics Marian Sawer Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworks Part of the Leadership Studies Commons, and the Political Science Commons Sawer, M. (1996). International review of women and leadership: Special issue, volume 2 number 1: women and politics. Churchlands, Australia: Edith Cowan University. This Other is posted at Research Online. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworks/6825 Edith Cowan University Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorize you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. 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Marian Sawer . o/o[ume 2, 9{um6er 1, Jufg, 1996 D E DI T H COWAN UNIVERS ITY I. , PERTH WESTERN AUSTRALIA UNIVERSITY UBRARY 0 BU 0 CH 0 CL 0 JN ~ML DATE RECEIVED 1 0 OCT 1996 Internationa[ ~view ofWomen and Leadership EDITOR: EDITORIAL ADDRESS: Leonie V Still, Leonie V Still Editor, International Review of Women and Leadership, ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Edith Cowan University, Pearson Street, Catherine R Smith Churchlands, Perth, Western Australia, 6018, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR: Australia Telephone: 61 9 273 8136 Florence Maltby Facsimile: 61 9 273 8181 Email: [email protected] EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: World Wide Web Address: http: I /www.cowan.edu.au/ dvc/ irwl/ Joy Hocking welcome.htm Yvonne Melotte Anyone wishing to submit material for EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: publication should refer to the Notes for Contributors on the inside back cover. Alison Crooke SUBSCRIPTION DETAILS: INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL BOARD: International Review of Women and Leadership Australia is published twice yearly in July and Andrew Hede, Sunshine Coast University December by Edith Cowan University, College, Queensland Pearson Street, Churchlands, Perth, Western Australia, 6018, Australia. Canada INFORMATION FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Nancy Adler, McGill University Ronald J Burke, York University New orders and sample copy requests should be addressed to the Editorial Greece Assistant, Alison Crooke, International Review Athena Petraki Kottis, Athens University of of Women and Leadership, Edith Cowan Economics and Business University, Pearson Street, Churchlands, Perth, Western Australia, 6018, Australia. Israel Cheques should be made payable to Edith Dafna Izraeli, Bar Ilan University Cowan University. New Zealand 1996 subscription prices (2 issues) are: Margaret Wilson, University ofWaikato Individual: AVO$ 60.00 Institution: AUD$ 150.00 United Kingdom Student: AVO$ 40.00 Marilyn Davidson, University of Manchester Individual (Overseas): AUD$ 100.00 Institute of Science and Technology Institutions (Overseas): AUD$ 200.00 Jeff Hearn, The University of Manchester Student (Overseas): AVO$ 60.00 Judi Marshall, University of Bath Cover Design: Kathy Barrett-Lennard United States of America © Copyright 1996 Edith Cowan University Ellen Fagenson, George Mason University Printed and bound by Edith Cowan Kathy Kram, Boston University University, Australia ISSN 1323-1685 Intemationa{ ~view ofWomen and Leatfersliip Volume 2 Number 11996 Contents Guest Editorial i Why So Few? The Political Culture of Gender in Israel 1 Hanna Herzog, Tel Aviv University, Israel Democratic Leadership Practices in Australian Feminist 19 Women's Services: The Pursuit of Collectivity and Social Citizenship? Wendy Weeks, University of Melbourne, Australia Do Political Women Represent Women? Views of 34 Discrimination and Representation Among Female and Male Mayors in Quebec Manon Tremblay, University of Ottawa, Canada Queensland ALP Women Parliamentarians: Women in Suits 47 and Boys in Factions Sharon Broughton and Di Zetlin, University of Queensland, Australia Early Money, EMILY's List and Learning to Add the Zeroes 62 Kate Sullivan, Australian National Uni~ersity, Australia Women's Leadership in the Consumer Movement 74 Eileen Baldry, University of New South Wales, Australia Historical Note: Breaking the Monumental Mould: How the 86 Edith Cowan Clock was Built Chilla Bulbeck, Griffith University, Australia Book Reviews 91 International Review of Women and Leadership (1996) 2 (1), i-xvi EDITOR'S NOTE: To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the election of the first woman to an Australian Parliament, the International Review of Women and Leadership is fortunate to have as the guest editor of this special issue Dr Marian Sawer, Associate Professor in Politics at the University of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. Dr. Sawer has published over 100 academic titles as well as a number of books, including Sisters in Suits: Women and Public Policy in Australia (Allen & Unwin, 1990); A Woman's Place: Women and Politics in Australia (with Marian Simms, 2nd Ed., Allen & Unwin, 1993) and Working from Inside: Twenty Years of the Office of the Status of Women (with Abigail Groves, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1994). Dr. Sawer has represented the ACT Government on the Council of the Constitutional Centenary Foundation and on the Centenary of Federation Advisory Committee. She was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1994 for 'services to women and to political science'. Guest Editorial Challenging Politics? Seventy-Five Years of Women's Parliamentary Representation in Australia Marian Sawer Australian National University /University of Canberra, Australia This year is the 75th anniversary of the election of Edith Cowan to the Western Australian parliament, the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament. It is highly appropriate that the International Review of Women and Leadership should commemorate this anniversary with a special issue dedicated to women and politics. This has enabled us to use Edith Cowan's experience of parliamentary politics as a prism through which to examine continuing dilemmas of women's representation in public life - including concepts of women's interests, equality and difference, separatism versus integration and independence versus partisanship. Although Edith Cowan was alone of all her sex to become a legislator in Australia at the time, she was not the second in the British Empire to enter parliament, as inscribed on the tribute presented to her by the National Council of Women after the election. I. am one of those guilty of perpetuating this myth (A Woman's Place, 1984, 1993). We overlooked the social radicalism of the Canadian prairies during this period, of which women were very much a part. By the time of Edith Cowan's election (March 1921) she had been preceded into parliament by five women elected to provincial parliaments in Canada, as well i Guest Editorial as by Lady Astor in the United Kingdom. Two women had been elected in Alberta in 1917, one in British Columbia iiJ. 1918, one in Saskatchewan in 1919 and one in Manitoba in 1920. Sogiving due acknowledgment to these Canadian pioneers, Edith Cowan was the eighth woman to be elected to parliament in the British Empire and 1 the seventh to enter parliament • Twelve days after Edith Cowan's election to parliament, Mary Ellen Smith, already in her second term in the parliament of British Columbia, became the first woman Cabinet Minister in the British Empire. There were a number of shared elements in Cowan's experience and that of other first women MPs in the countries with which Australia shared the 'crimson thread of kinship'. Characteristically the 'first women', as beneficiaries of the women's suffrage movement, were seen as representatives of women-at-large as well as being accountable to their own electorates. The first women MPs embraced these dual accountabilities, unlike the women politicians discussed in this issue, who are often fearful of the additional representational burden involved, its implications for political careers in today' s highly disciplined party and factional systems, or simply because they do not identify with women as a group suffering from collective disadvantage. When Edith Cowan crowned her lifetime of community service by standing for parliament, for what principles did she stand? The first plank in her platform, 'Law and Order and the maintenance of Constitutional Government', was very much of her era, when fear of Bolshevism was rife. In other respects her 1921 platform ranged from 'difference' demands, such as motherhood endowment and 'national kitchens in every suburb', to the 'equality' demand of equal pay. In between came elements relating to social welfare which capture both the continuities and the discontinuities of the last century of the women's movement. Edith Cowan has now achieved iconic status, not only with her clock tower memorial at the entrance to Kings. Park, Perth, Western Australia, but with both a federal seat of parliament and a university named after her and her