{"id":6971,"date":"2020-12-27T18:35:34","date_gmt":"2020-12-27T18:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.broadagenda.com.au\/?p=8628"},"modified":"2020-12-27T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T18:35:34","slug":"2020-women-politics-and-public-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/27\/2020-women-politics-and-public-life\/","title":{"rendered":"2020: Women, politics and public life"},"content":{"rendered":"
It has been both a remarkably good and remarkably bad year for Australian women.<\/p>\n
Their leadership in Australian politics and public life has been more prominent and successful than ever before. Yet the pandemic has set back the broad swathe of women at home, in education and in the workplace.<\/p>\n
First the good news. In 2020 we have entered something of a golden age for women in political leadership.<\/p>\n
In October, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk emerged as the most successful female politician in Australian history, when she became the first woman to win three elections in a row<\/a>.<\/p>\n Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk emerged as the most successful female politician in Australian history, when she became the first woman to win three elections in a row.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Palaszczuk\u2019s victory capped her 2015 success as the first woman in Australia to win an election from opposition. It also follows her 2017 win, when she created gender equity<\/a> in an Australian ministry for the first time.<\/p>\n But a woman would have been premier whatever happened on October 31. With Deb Frecklington leading the LNP, the Queensland election was the first state or federal election to see two women going head-to-head in a contest for premier.<\/p>\n Queensland has had a female leader for 10 of the past 13 years \u2014 between them, Anna Bligh and Palaszczuk have won four elections.<\/p>\n Palaszczuk\u2019s achievement, and Bligh\u2019s before her, is worth pondering. They show the often privately voiced assumption in federal political circles that male leaders are more likely succeed in what is seen as the masculinist state of Queensland as one of the great lies of Australian politics.<\/p>\n Palaszczuk also survived sustained attacks<\/a> on her COVID border management in the lead up to and during the state election. She stared down NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian<\/a> and brushed off similar pressure from Prime Minister Scott Morrison.<\/p>\n