Is Australia ready for another female leader?
It's been more than a decade now since the Australian Labor Party dumped Julia Gillard as prime minister and turned back to Kevin Rudd to save the furniture. After a torrid term in office, Gillard said of her gender as she departed: 'It doesn't explain everything; it doesn't explain nothing. It explains something.'
Ley's elevation to the liberal leadership is a significant moment in Australian political history, and it sets twin tests. The first is for the Liberal Party: after years of decline in female support because of perceptions it is too male-dominated, too blokey, is it ready to be led by a woman? And will the party give her time to grow into the role?
The second test is for those Australians who struggled, during Gillard's prime ministership, with the mere fact that a woman was leading the country – many of whom shared sexist and denigrating memes.
We don't know yet whether Australians are ready for a woman to lead a major political party once again, let alone whether a majority would be prepared to vote a woman into the prime ministership. (And that's before you factor in the 33 seats the Coalition has to win back to form government.)
The federal political landscape is supposed to have changed for the better in the past decade, with shocking revelations raised by Brittany Higgins and Rachelle Miller leading to the Respect@Work report into sexual harassment, the Set the Standard report into parliament's workplace culture and more.
Steps have been taken to improve the culture in Canberra with the creation of a Parliamentary Workplace Support Service and an Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission – though both lack the teeth they need.
In theory, the arrival of another federal leader who happens to be a woman should be no big deal. It has become commonplace for state premiers and chief ministers to be women. Women have held almost every senior portfolio federally, though not as treasurer.
Countering that, the Liberal Party has, to be blunt, failed in the past decade with its treatment of and appeal to women, with its policy offering becoming less and less appealing to women under Scott Morrison and then Peter Dutton.
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