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Book Review
| Deborah Brennan and Louise Chappell (eds), 'No fit place for women'?: Women in New South Wales Politics, 1856–2006, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2006. pp. xii + 289 $49.95 cloth.
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| This robust book emerged from the publishing project that marked the Sesquicentenary of Responsible Government in NSW. Its title comes from the 'maiden speech' of the first woman to sit in the NSW Parliament, Nationalist MP Mrs Millicent Preston-Stanley, who took her seat in 1925 and lambasted the men of all parties, including her own, who said Parliament was 'no fit place for women'. As she noted, if men criticised the place, it was an indictment of themselves, for it was 'an institution entirely of their own making'. Modern readers will not be at all surprised by Deborah Brennan's observation that the Daily Telegraph considered it essential to report what Mrs Preston-Stanley was wearing. |
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By the end of 2006, when this book was released, just 80 women had followed Mrs Preston-Stanley into the bear-pit, although some 2000 men have held positions on the green and red benches of the Mother Parliament during the last 150 years. Of course, since this book was published we have had a state election, which saw five new female faces in the lower house and two in the upper house. Yet new Liberal MP, Pru Goward, felt moved to use her inaugural speech to complain about the sexism of the place. It does seem, for all women's achievements in public office, that there is much more to be done to make Parliament a 'fit place' for women, let alone a welcoming one. |
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This is a thorough and well-conceived book. Written by 14 different women and one solitary, brave bloke, the book is feminist and has a solid theoretical and feminist framework. This is neatly established in an introductory chapter which sets out the book's themes – the gendered nature of political institutions, and the ways the normative functions of gender can be challenged if the timing is right. |
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The book then branches into a collection of uniformly excellent essays, many of which focus on those exquisite moments when the timing was right for women to enter Parliament and affect change. Although the book concentrates on women in Parliament, it acknowledges the formal and informal political strategies used by women to influence politics, as they did during the suffrage campaigns, and in the second wave of feminism. Three solid chapters show how women have overcome obstacles within the political worlds of their own parties, whether Labor, Coalition or minor parties. There are chapters devoted to women's work in the public service, to the advisory councils and in the lobby groups that swirl around the house, and to younger feminists. |
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This is an extremely useful text – both a survey and a scaffold for further research into the lives of women in NSW politics. The only criticism I would make is that the collective authors have drawn general pictures from diverse histories and lives, which tends to flatten the narrative. I was also bemused by a number of unreadable tables which detail the pre-parliamentary vocations of the 81 women and the concerns expressed in their inaugural speeches, but which are completely unreadable and, given the slight numbers under consideration, unnecessary. Missing from this book is the particular sense of what drove individual women to enter parliament, or of what (and who) they overcame to get there. There is no oral history, or accounts from relatives and friends, to make these women three-dimensional. They are named, but do not live as characters. |
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The book is, however, suspenseful – largely because of that theme of the timing being right. It was right for women to achieve the goal of suffrage and, much later, to influence the Wran Government of the 1970s and 1980s. Wran's cabinet picked up women's concerns and introduced a range of initiatives on domestic violence and equality, using the same language women had used to identify their problems. But such moments slipped away. Greiner's managerialism resulted in the winding back of many women's agencies and lobby groups – a decline that steepened during the Carr years, and appears set to continue. |
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This book shows how much has been achieved by political women, but how much there is yet to be done, or which needs doing again. Despite this, the book finishes on an optimistic note, postulating that young women are not so disconnected from feminism as their older sisters might believe, and that this time of apparent apathy may be a period 'between the waves' (p. 226). We can only hope this optimism is not misplaced. |
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| University of Western Sydney |
NAOMI PARRY | |
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