HARASSMENT AND BULLYING IN

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS
Oct 26th, 2022
POLITICAL CULTURE

INTRODUCTION
The wave of the movement against harassment and assault was collective action
gathering women from a variety of industries, including technology, computer,
filmmaking, television, businesswomen, and female politicians around the world. The
surprising part of those events is a significant number of women making claims, most of
them for the first time, regarding their abuse, harassment, and assault cases.
Experiences of harassment, especially among low-income women belonging to a racial
minority, have been historically outcasted and ignored. The issue of harassment is only
more publicly discussed and raised.
Harassment is often associated with unwanted attention or physical intervention from
management at work. However, harassment is a violation of an individual’s boundaries,
which can manifest itself in different ways. Particularly, sexual harassment can manifest
itself both physically, such as unwanted touching, kissing, hugging, and pinching, and
verbally such as vulgar or offensive compliments, and ambiguous hints of sexual
intercourse (Goh et al., 2021). Other than sexual harassment, harassment also includes
unwanted calls, vulgar gestures, insults, coercion into intimacy, stalking, whistling, and
shouting in the street.
Unfortunately, the sources reporting sexual harassment, intimidation, and physical
attacks against females in politics or female activists are only increasing. Such activities,
which reflect attempts to limit women’s political contributions, discourage women from
voting and promote established gender stereotypes, severely threatening the democracy
and raising issues about worldwide progress toward incorporating women as full political
participants. Hence, there is a need to put a spotlight on the issue of harassment in
politics toward women. The paper focuses on sexual harassment and assault in the
political field of Australia specifically. The Australian situation is compared to sexual
harassment in the politics of the United Kingdom.
EVOLUTION OF WOMEN’S ROLE IN AUSTRALIAN
POLITICS
Examples of sexual harassment in politics
Since Australia was the first democratic legislature that gave women the right to vote
and to run for office in 1902, the country was perceived as a pioneer in political rights for
women. Despite such advances, the first woman was elected as a member of parliament
only forty-one years later, in 1943, and the federal House was still women free and
remained so for the next three and a half decades. The women’s part in the legislature
took only 6 percent by 1990, which was significantly behind the advances of other
Westminster parliament systems in Canada and the United Kingdom. By 2018, the
number of seats held female members of parliament in the House is 29 percent, which is
higher than the record value of 27 percent in 2007 (Sawer, 2013). It indicates the fairly
steady but stagnated progress at approximately a quarter of the House seats held by
female politicians.
The experience of female parliament members in the Australian government was far from
ideal. For women in the 1980s, political campaigning was not an easy sphere of work
since political parties encouraged female politicians to work with the duties of “male
escort (preferably a campaign manager) to fend off drunks [and] provide general
protection from unwanted attention” (Sawer, & Simms, 1984, p. 102). In the early 1980s,
when female representatives in politics increased, public awareness of sexist incidents
increased along with women in politics suffering from offensive and unwanted attention.
Jennifer Adamson, who was a Minister of Health from 1979 to 1982, after being twice
“pinched in the bottom” by another male politician in the dining room, started a campaign
for the inclusion of sexual harassment in equal opportunities and anti-discrimination
legislation. Roslyn Kelly, when making the Minister of Capital Territory report in the
House during the debates, became a subject of sexual jokes in the early 1980s. The
Minister was declining her question, arguing that Kelly was in love with him (Collier &
Raney 2018). Such cases of sexual harassment in the Australian government, including
both federal and state levels, and all political parties, have been appearing in the XXI
century.

Victim-blaming
Victim-blaming is one of the ways that an established gendered political system
suppresses social awareness regarding harassment. One of the recent cases is when
Jamie Briggs, who was Liberal Minister of Cities, was pushed to leave his position after
the incident of sexual harassment with a female staff member of the Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade in November of 2015. Initially, Briggs denied the case and was
forced to resign after the official complaint came forward by the victim. Even though
Prime Minister Turnbull was willing to push for Briggs’s resignation, a lot of office
colleagues supported Briggs, attempting to understate the incident (Bourke, 2015). It
clearly illustrates the broad trend of victim-blaming at those times. Later, it was known
that Briggs had several actions around female workers, which could have been
considered sexual harassment, but had not been formally reported. All the
abovementioned incidents reveal evidence for reinforcement of male norms of behavior
and decreased concern for reprisals during the debates. In some cases, female concerns
regarding equality issues are declined as unimportant (Krook, 2017). Also, it shows how
men come together to protect their guilty colleagues and silence the female victims of
sexual harassment, who try to bring attention to such men’s unfair behavior.

High positioned women in politics

The level of Australian institutional norms’ encouragement and facilitation of sexism can
further be seen by considering women subjected to sexual harassment at all levels. Julia
Gillard, the first female Prime Minister of Australia, mentioned several quotes by male
politicians that offended her as a female politician during her speech in 2012. Julia Gillard
said that she was offended when the Leader of the Opposition catcalled her saying, “If
the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking, make an honest woman of herself…”,
something that would never be addressed to man Prime Minister (Transcript of Julia
Gillard’s speech, 2012). Even though she could achieve the highest political ladder, she
was experiencing and feeling the masculine privileged environment.
Moreover, the masculine gendered norms were so deeply engraved that even some
female politicians could not recognize sexism. The myth that the political arena of
Australia is gender-neutral spread to all members of parliament, including women. For
example, before the speech of Gillard, she was blamed for the understatement of
existing gender inequality in politics to promote herself further in her political career.
During the three years of Gillard’s service as Prime Minister, she was constantly criticized
for being childless, calling her “barren,” “a lying cow,” and incompetent (Sawer, 2013, p.
112). During her speech, Julia Gillard concluded that disrespect for Australia’s first woman
Prime Minister, and all other women in politics, are discouraging young generation
women from running for office.

COMPARISON TO THE BRITISH CASE

The situation of the British government in terms of harassment in politics is similar to
Australia. In comparison, the British House of Commons had 32 percent of seats held by
women in 2018, which is the highest ever results. Even though the British political sphere
is also highly masculinized with a significant number of sexism incidences. In the case of
the British government, there is harassment beyond sexual characteristics such as race,
class, and age-based incidences. For example, in 2008, Black Female House
representative, Dawn Butler, was asked by a white male member of parliament what she
was doing in the section for members. Then, he turned to another male, white colleague
and said that “they are letting anybody in nowadays” (Moosa, 2008). It is a clear indication
of sexual harassment within the British political system.

CURRENT SITUATION
Nowadays, there are significant improvements in women’s role in political life around the
world. The presence of female representatives in politics, including national parliaments,
has increased along with the recognition of ladies as socially and politically active
citizens. It made female citizens take the role of key voting demographics. Most people
are positive about such changes, claiming that women in politics bring a new perspective
and attention to a wider spectrum of political issues, especially feminine problems. Also,
such changes in the role of women in society bring other positive changes, such as
inspiring other younger ladies to be interested and engaged in politics. Most importantly,
these events push away the stereotypical historical association of politics with men.

CONCLUSION
To conclude, nowadays, sexual harassment and assault issues are being more frequently
discussed and raised by feminists and other social activists. Sexual harassment can be
described as the action of violating an individual’s boundaries both physically and
verbally. The increased social awareness regarding the existence of such reinforced
establishments against women resulted in the revealing of sexual harassment in various
aspects of life. Unfortunately, the harassment of women can even be seen in the political
life of Australia. Throughout the history of the Australian government, it is seen that the
political sphere is highly male-gendered, with women’s roles being highly dismissed as
unimportant. Even though the number of women holding seats as members of parliament
is increasing, there is still a masculine privileged environment in politics in Australia. The
example of Julia Gillard being Prime Minister is a strong demonstration of the
unimportant perception of women in politics and the disrespectful attitude of male
politicians towards women in politics. The masculine privilege is so deep in the mentality
of Australian politicians that even women politicians are unwillingly supporting the fake
gender neutrality of politics.
Moreover, the example of Julia Gillard is an indication of how strong the reinforcement of
masculine privilege within politics is. Despite the high rank of Julia Gillard, she could
experience harassment from her male colleagues, even from a politician who is in a lower
position. Also, such incidences discourage other women and especially the younger
generation, from participating in the political life of their country.

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