Pavlov’s Cat made a very incisive comment here recently, apropos of the silly push for Tony Abbott to be leader of the Liberal Party (which seems to have disappeared ever since Malcolm got ‘back on the front foot’, ‘muscled up’, ‘took the fight up to the government’ blah blah by banging on about debt and deficit – alliteration masks a multiplicity of sins in politics – and buying a debt truck):
The widespread practice of simply ignoring women in male-dominated discussions does not make the fact that we make up 51% of voters go away.
Indeed. Women are nigh on invisible, or at least very radically under-represented in most public discussions of electoral politics. But, as Pavlov’s Cat points out, we constitute more than a majority of the electorate… and that’s reflected in the composition of samples taken for polls. So as Possum reveals (with one of his spiffy graphs), the Coalition trails much further behind where they were at the last election with women voters than with male:
The Coalition is pulling a fairly stable average of 37-39 among male voters, which isn’t crash hot, but it’s not exactly terrible either. The thing about election campaigns is that it’s pretty easy to win or lose a few points with any demographic, so if the Coalition went into the next campaign only 3 or 4 points down among males, it’s a doable proposition for them.
With the female vote however, they’re pulling an average 34-37, which is a staggering 7 to 10 point decline on their result from the last election. Turning around a gap that large simply isn’t a doable proposition over the short time frame of an election campaign. For the Coalition to not go backwards at the next election (let alone win), they have to substantially improve their female voter base before the next election campaign starts, simply to give them some realistic base to launch a final assault on Labor from during the campaign itself.
[By the way, Possum also reveals with customary wonkiness and style, that the puzzle of why the PM is popular - so unintelligible to the press gallery and the Libs - might be explained by the fact that the PM is liked. Circular, I know, but there you have it...]
So, why, exactly, are the Libs so on the nose with women voters? Speculate away…
Kim – to expect us to pick just one morsel from this huge yum cha tray of chauvinist, backwards dumplings is just too, too cruel!
Could it be the fact that Workchoices disproportionately affected women?
Big Tony’s well known stance on abortion?
The dearth of women on the Liberal front bench – barring the idiotic Bishop?
Howard’s very narrow idea of what women should be spending their time doing (having babies and being secretaries) and the policies to accompany?
I think Climate change is a culprit not to be underestimated also.
I know, patrickg! I’m hesitate to speculate myself because I can think of so many reasons!
With the female vote however, they’re pulling an average 34-37
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It was good to get to this part! When I started to read this article I was ready to be shocked with something like 10% of female support, the Libs doing very nicely at turning people off in recent times.
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I don’t think patrickg’s analysis really tells the story – the women who make decisions based on these issues were never going to be vote Liberal anyway. I think it’s more to do with the old boys club image that comes across to the ‘mainstream’. The image and sound bites of guys like Hockey and Turnbull. Although not at federal level I think the demeanour of Barry O’Farrell sums it up. Couple that with the fact they struggle to come up with anything exciting, interesting or principled and you’ve got a surefire loser. Rudd is younger and appears more relevant, there’s younger women on the team, and despite at times being a bit lame he is still carrying some potential for new hope (although that will wear off over the next few months as the economic situation starts to take its toll).
There’s a whole bunch of obvious ones – WorkChoices is probably top of the list – but I’m curious about one thing.
I wonder whether support/demands for actions on climate change varies significantly by gender?
Interesting question, Rob. I wonder if there’s any polling.
Michael, I think you should click through from the post to Possum’s article on ‘Kevinology’.
I reckon that all the Libs need to do to turn this around is to have a Debt Truck wet t-shirt night. That’d pull the punters in, and really get the chicks going.
Nuthin’ like a wet t-shirt … mmmm … titties and beer …
I don’t know. Families are hugely targeted, by pollies and the commentariat, and the amount of control women have over ‘kitchen table economics’ is always a major subtext.
Single women without children might be invisible, though. “No special tax benefits for deliberately barren women, they don’t vote for us” as Bill Heffernan might say.
I’d like to see Possum take on “Parliamentary theatre”. Every instance where “Parliamentary theatre” hits the news – Hockey getting red-faced and shouty, Abbott hoeing into Gillard, Macklin and Roxon, Costello getting smirky – the Coalition vote would go into freefall. “Parliamentary theatre” is political heroin, stay well away from it.
V. smart of Labor to neutralise Abbott with women – put him against Albanese or Tanner and it’s anyone’s game, but Gillard got where she is today by climbing all over Abbott – proving that he’s not as tough or as smart as his friends (and, it would seem here, many who’d never vote Liberal anyway) would make out.
Yep. And that was Keating’s downfall to a big degree too.
Press gallery love it, though. And the Libs seem to be more concerned about whether Glenn Milne will still love them in the morning than what the electorate think.
Abbott doesn’t do himself any favours, mind. Cf. “bullshit” to Nicola Roxon at the health debate that he hardly bothered to turn up to during the last election.
Michael, I think you should click through from the post to Possum’s article on ‘Kevinology’.
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I see a few holes in that. Put it this way, if the Libs presented a credible alternative and the economic pain set in I think things might change violently. Kev’s pretty right though, what’s the chance of a credible alternative in that time? Probably somewhere around zero. The voters do like Kev, but they were sick of Howard after 11 years and everything that followed wasn’t exactly a breath of fresh air.
Most women don’t like head-kickers.
Concise. And accurate.
Which is why the “muscling up” of Turnbull is probs also not going down too well. Impresses the hard heads in the party and the press gallery circle jerkers, but dignified, calm and reasonable (remind you of anyone?) might be a better look with voters. But – he’s no doubt stuck with what he’s adopted.
Well, the discrepancy in the women’s numbers before and after the election could be explained by the fact that a number of women (again, the sorts of women who are particularly invisible to men, ie those more or less over 40 and/or otherwise not Hawt, and Liberal or swinging voters to boot) actually quite liked Howard and trusted him. He may have been all sorts of unspeakable things, but a volatile type A thug and standover merchant he was not.
That’s right, I think, Dr Cat.
It’d be interesting to see an age and gender breakdown before and after the election. I think Rudd learned something from Howard that all the “he’s stealing our policies” crud didn’t come close to pinging – the avuncular and trustworthy persona – and not talking down to people, which the press gallery see as insincere and Christian Kerr thinks is spin. Or something. “Christian Kerr thinks” might be an oxymoron.
/snark
Historically polling has shown women are more concerned about safety than men, in many different forms that could take. I don’t know if that is still the case, but would guess it is.
This means that, all else being equal, they’ve often been more inclined than men to back the incumbent, as long as they seem to be doing a competent job.
I’m not proposing that is a factor that replaces the ones given above, most of which I suspect are true, but adds to them. I particularly think the shortage of women in significant positions for the federal Libs is a huge problem. They’d be well advised to pinch one of the South Australian leadership candidates, were it not that there is no obvious seat to put them into. Maybe a Senate spot would be the go. (Replace Nick Minchin? Well one can dream.)
The most recent Newspoll figure (which relates to April-June 2009) mentioned in the spiffy graph by Possum which Kim links to has the Coalition’s share of the female primary vote at 37 per cent. The Coalition’s share of the male primary vote was…37 per cent. The average Coalition share of the female vote since the 2007 election (that is, between January-March 2008 and April-June 2009) was 36 per cent. The equivalent figure for males was…37 per cent.
The Coalition’s share of the female vote was even fairly similar to its share of the male vote in the 2007 election – 44 and 42 per cent respectively (with women voting for the Coalition more than men).
In short, it’s just not true that the Coalition is particularly on the nose with women voters. They are more or less equally unpopular with women and men.
As to the ALP, the most recent Newspoll figure mentioned by Possum has the ALP’s share of the female vote at 45 per cent. The ALP’s share of the male vote was…44 per cent. In short, the most recent Newspoll figures mentioned by Possum have the voting intentions of female and male voters being virtually identical.
I’m struggling to see much of a gender angle in these poll figures. In any case, if there is a gender angle, it seems to be completely swamped by other, non-gender factors.
(Nevertheless, it is true that there was a significant gender difference in how the ALP faired in the 2007 election. 42 per cent of female voters voted for the ALP in the 2007 election, while 47 per cent of male voters did likewise. If you really wanted to find a gender angle in these poll figures, I would ask: why has the ALP’s share of the male vote fallen from 47 to 44 per cent, while it’s share of the female vote has risen from 42 to 45 per cent?)
Sometimes there are votes even in the Oz Parliament that should give even the hardest or indeed, softest heads something to mull over. The votes in the Senate on the RU-486 bill was one.
The female to male ratio of votes (a rare vote not held on party lines) broke down gender wise thus: only 10% of female senators (ie. 3 of out 28) voted to allow Abbott to continue to hold onto his ministerial prerogative against 54% of males (ie. 25 of 46)
TONY ABBOTT, HEALTH MINISTER: The senators have effectively voted “no confidence” in ministers and parliaments, at least on this issue.
When you can’t even ‘control’ the female senators in your own party, what hope the entire female population of the country?
And the moment I knew we’d have a big chance in the ’07 election was when ‘Tracey’ answered the phone…”Oh, hi, Mr Howard…. you want me to come into work today……….but….”
So long…farewell…auf wiedersehen…goodbye……
As to polling, I would think the devil (wearing prada) is in the details.
I work in an environment where I speak to people from all walks of life all the time and politics is often on the agenda. I know it’s not exactly Possum-quality polling, but if I had to put my finger on one thing, it seems to be that people – especially women – just LIKE Rudd.
The harder the Opposition and press gallery go at him personally, the more people seem to empathise with him. It’s the Scores stuff over and over again; the Opposition seem to be constantly – inadvertently, I’m sure – humanising him for the voters, reminding us that he is, underneath all the nerdy officiousness and bureaucrat-speak, just an ordinary bloke. Add into the mix his alternately embarrassing, nerdy, charming, friendly self on shows like ‘Rove’ and you’ve got a guy that people really like and are proud to have as their Prime Minister.
Even in the context of the GFC, I think even if things go seriously pear-shaped, I’m not sure people will hold him personally responsible. I think he would have to stuff up monumentally – and in a very personal way – for that to change.
Although the Press Gallery and “pundits” routinely fawn over head-kickers and male matters, I’d be confident the party private polling keeps a VERY close eye on women voters’ opinions on all kinds of issues. Each Party has to win over voters at an election. I’m confident they can’t ignore womens opinions, even if their spokespersons appear crass on such.
BTW, Tony Abbott was simply LATE to that debate. Not a good look, and he sulked about it. And Nicola needled him – probably guessing he’d snap. I’d suggest that was subtle head-kicking style biffo on Nicola’s part. But subtle. Elicited the very photogenic snarl frm the altar boy. Earlier, she had entertained the Press by offering to do a Tony impersonation, in his absence.
Robert Merkel @4, that is the most interesting question of all, the gender split on global warming, and something that is apparently never polled, wonder why?
Getting all Paglian about it, and indulging in vast generalisations, my guess is that women are much more concerned about AGW than men, because they are the species responsible for raising the children of the future, and they are more in touch with the seasons (watching trees blossoming way before spring and no more small birds and where are the bees).
Men are too busy running running around building better shelters (or fighting off terrorists), so that the women who have chosen them don’t have to keep their children warm in grass huts next winter etc….
And look at the blogosphere, where the arguments amongst men are mostly about degrees of warming and your graph is better than mine, rather than talking about the dreadfully scary biological and ecological changes that are happening before our very eyes.
Women of the world must unite to drive forward action on climate change, for the sake of our children, but if we don’t know that we have the power of the poll, then we remain unorganised, and captive to the stupid political grandstanding and dick-swinging of men…enough.
And what has all that to do with the Mad Monk? Strangely, I suspect that Tony, like Malcolm, Tip, Greg Hunt etc, and a few of the “younger” Howardistas, are probably in their heart of hearts quite capable of understanding AGW and trying to save the planet, if they were not in thrall to blithering idiots like Barnaby and dark-hearted facists like Minchin.
No, Tony would be death for the Libs as Leader for the clear and apparent reason that he is openly and vociferously anti-abortion, and willing to drive women, especially single mothers, into poverty. His track record is there for all to see, and will not be forgiven.
And yes Ambigulous @20, you are dead right. Roxon goaded poor silly Tony, and the fool took the bait, right in front of the cameras. Roxon is very well-equipped for the full frontal stoush with half-men like the Mad Monk, just like Julia, but the dancing bears at Limited News, with their tragic dribbling man-love, are completely blind to how dangerously women can behave when they are determined to win. Should be more of them in power, for the sake of our children, and the planet.
I recall seeing polls supporting this contention, as well as reports of an address by Labor greenhouse denialist Gary Gray to the Lavoisier Group in which he lamented the inability of denialism to get any traction with women under 40.
Agree, and the older the cohort the more pronounced this effect would be. This points to something which Bob Menzies – and Howard – understood, and which was forgotten by whoever was responsible for the “Jeff F***ing Rules!” campaign slogan for the Liberals in the 1999 Victorian State election.
Taking a slightly longer view, I think that if we were to look at breakdowns of voting patterns by age and gender over the past decade we would probably find a gender gap in favour of left-of-centre parties among voters under 40 which would have widened over time as successive cohorts of young women reached voting age and the right-of-centre parties became more out of touch with them on various fronts.
Further to my previous comment, here is the text of a letter I wrote to The Age six years ago.
Yeah there have been polls about, and women are significantly more supportive of action on climate. It’s not necessarily the ‘belief’ that was higher, but the denialism quota is siginificantly lower.
I think Howard generally did do ok with female voters because he had the “stern yet safe” grandfather style to him.
Today though I think the issue is one of style and presentation. Turnbull can come across as patrician and aloof. Abbott is aggressive. Hockey does generally present well but any benefit is negated by the complete female duds on the front bench. Julie Bishop and Sophie Mirabella? Please!
With the lack of talent on the backbenches too (Bronywn Bishop running AGAIN!), it’s going to be a long time before the Liberals will be competitive for the female vote.
And Latham did badly because of his perceived aggression. The taxi driver incident did him no favours.
I reckon that now it’s as much Labor doing well as the Liberals doing badly. Rudd is the boy – smart, polite, successful – that every mother wants, although he does slip up occasionally (the flight attendant, the New York night club). But every mother knows that the even the best of boys slip up occasionally.
For the non-mother women appeal, enter Julia Gillard. Smart, sassy, unprententious and a little bit self-deprecating – it is a winning combination. Not to everyone’s taste’s of course; the tribal Liberals detest her, but they aren’t swinging voters.
The fact that you can find the Libs using the same rationalisations and language as the religious Right in USA is enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.
The Libs come across as just not liking people.
Also, they come across as uncaring – eg attitudes to unemployed, single mothers, generation why, disabled etc. The list is endless. As to whether its really a gender perception – I’m not sure. Maybe after 11 years of indecency all of us just had enough.
The electorate wanted to get rid of the Howardistas when Latham first became Opposition leader, but he turned out such a goose, they thought, oh, we better not.
And, as other comments have suggested Climate Change/Global Warming scepticism is a big factor for the Libs being dumped. We’re all worried about what’s going to happen to future generations if we fail to deal with it.
Women are more concerned about social safety nets and educating children, caring for elderly family members.
Young men don’t see the need for social safety nets, health insurance etc. Labor is pandering to young men through the infrastructure stimulus i.e. providing more construction jobs [not hiring more teachers or nurses]
Women traditionally get higher pay in government jobs than they can attract in the private sector and Labor promises to spend more on health and education major employers of women]
Tony Abbott’s stance on abortion is thought provoking and Steve Fielding’s Family First stance would appeal to that small minority of women who have actively chosen a fundamentalist lifestyle
Sam @ 26 …”he does slip up occasionally (the flight attendant, the New York night club)” If you added the hair dryer story you’d have rounded up all of Rudd’s supposed slip ups, and two of these have not been substantiated! And haven’t we all had a run-in with someone sometime or other about poor service. The thing most people have against him, if they don’t like him that is, is what is described as his nerdiness and goody-two shoes image, which of course is “phoney” and “spin”. How could Turnbull have been so foolish as to try character assassination on this man with such a flimsy pretext even if that email had been genuine.
Most reasonable people have built-in BS detectors and I think that explains Rudd’s popularity on a personal level. Even rightish friends of mine think he’s a nice, unassuming bloke with decent instincts. Add to that his freakish combination of intelligence, perfectionism, work ethic and good political instincts and we have somehow lucked upon a potentially great PM. Plus he he’s not afraid to promote talent, male and female! I think this is a big part of his success.
Gillard, Roxon, Macklin and all those other other intelligent and warm ALP women aside look at his wife! It takes a good man to stay in a sound relationship with a strong, achieving woman. And she’s a sweetheart too!
Who are the women married to or working with Tony Abbott and Tony Smith and Joe Hockey? Mirabella? Stone? the two Bishops? Do we know them, like them, trust them? Who is the woman with the simpering smile sitting behind Turnbull in the House of Reps? Turnbull at least still has Lucy, I suppose.
If there is any measurable difference between women and men in their political preferences it has come to down to the old saying that we judge others by the company they keep. Lovely, strong, intelligent Labour women. Show me their like in the Coalition.
@17 – James, Possum is using the quarterly newspoll aggregations. Please refer to his post for the tables, and I think he explains what he’s up to in comments.
Patricia WA #30, I have to say that I’ve been impressed by Nats Senator Fiona Nash over her pro-choice stances and an intelligent and articulate interview she gave on ABC Radio recently, but she is about the only counter-example I can think of in response to your last sentence.
Moving from the major parties to the minors, I think we’d also agree that Christine Milne and Rachel Siewart are far more impressive figures than Steve Fielding.
Yes, I think the women who look to issues like pro-choice policies and welfare policies probably always voted ALP. The swing is, as Sam said, as much to do with Labor doing well as the Libs doing badly. When the ALP was running Latham, I was really turned off by his whole bullyboy persona, even before the taxi-driver incident. Their lack of women in prominent roles was pretty telling, too. Now there’s Gillard, who is far more effective than Macklin ever was, there’s Rudd himself who comes across as pretty feminist (relatively speaking), there’s any number of up-and-coming female politicians.
The Libs, by contrast, have got older and more reactionary and even more male than ever before.
There is another point suggested by Patricia’s comment which is worth expanding upon. A political space which is not welcoming to strong and capable women will pay a double penalty in the long run. Not only will it be weakened by the absence of talented women in leading positions, it will be further weakened by the absence of the better type of talented men, i.e. those who are comfortable and happy in the company of strong and intelligent women.
rainne@33, “When the ALP was running Latham, I was really turned off by his whole bullyboy persona, even before the taxi-driver incident.” – the taxi driver incident was long before he was Labor leader.
What was thuggish about Mark Latham?
Indeed:
JillS
apparently Mr Latham used to send the most horrid, aggressive emails to his fellow Labor MPs before he became opposition leader. And yet he was elected Leader in a close vote. [So how much less did the Libs think of Mr Costello, never elected?!!] Mr Latham was known to be abrasive and tantrumic before elevation.
On the day of Mark’s elevation Kelvin Thompson MP said to journalists, “Strap yourselves in for a bumpy ride!!”. How prescient.
“Conga line of suckholes” “Pres Bush is a moron” etc. Bogan or thuggish? : you decide.
Well, when he said Bush was a moron he was just voicing a conclusion most world leaders had already come to privately.
What was thuggish about Mark Latham?
As me old Grandma would say, “Yer jokin, aintcha?!”
Yes, Paul, that may be correct; I was chatting about Mr Latham. His “undiplomatic” language was a facet of the thuggee, I opine. Some can get away with that, he blundered and tripped with it, IMO.
apparently Mr Latham used to send the most horrid, aggressive emails to his fellow Labor MPs \
Blow me down with a feather. How perfectly horrid.
All that’s nancy pants stuff.
Howard, Reith, Costello and so many federal Liberal ministers were thugs.
Latham’s a working-class lad with a tongue like a lash, not unaccustomed to a bit of a biff, attractive to women, hell they fought over him, and now is a full-time parent and part-time writer. Good on him.
And he wrote a bestselling absolutely riveting political memoir.
Re: #10 and #20. Was Abbott simply late to that debate? I’d assumed Howard had noticed the ALP walking all over Abbott with female ministers and that’s why he and Abbott were in Melbourne(?) when Tony was meant to be in Canberra debating Nicola. I assumed he wasn’t late, that Howard was trying to stop him from being there at all.
Re #30 and Latham. I thought it was Latham who promoted Gillard, Wong and Plibersek; not saying Kevin might not have done likewise, but I can’t name a single woman who was on the ALP’s front bench back then besides Jenny Macklin.
Re #25 and Liberal female talent. I have to admit Antonio, I go weak at the knees everytime Judi Moylan talks about refugees’ rights. Guts and class.
I remember back in 2004 I was pretty underwhelmed and so were many others back then. Here’s what I wrote in June 2004:
Credit where due – he changed his mind to “do the right thing” re. Tasmanian forests later and I posted admiringly about that. He got thumped really well over that by the Labor right notably the horrible Michael O’Connor.
Sorry for the threadjack – and if I had to choose, Tony Abbott is vastly scarier than Latho any day!
Ambi @ 41,
true. But it need to be said publicly.
Sorry, this really is the last O/T comment: I just came across the quote that, for me and many others, Won the Internets in 2004, from Rob Schaap – Remember Blogorrhea? Where are you Schaapy? Anyway: ““I want Labor to win – much in the way I prefer my ageing cat’s vomit to its diarrhoea.”
This is interesting. Women in Australia tend to defy international trends and often tend to the Right in their voting patterns.
I’ve never read any theory about why that might be.
Labor usually has to devise a conscious strategy to win them over.
The widespread practice of simply ignoring women in male-dominated discussions does not make the fact that we make up 51% of voters go away.
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Or consistently interupting them. Knew a guy once who could be guaranteed to do taht. Not a footy ape type, don’t socialize with them. A poet guy. Every time a woman tried to get a sentence out he’d be guaranteed to cut her off before subject got to object.
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Pointed this out. He told me he’d done some Women’s Studies subjects and got a High Distinction. Ergo he was a feminist. The chicks tended to agree despite never being able to finish a sentence around him. He was a very good looking chap, smart and affable.
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Tony Abbott would be an excellent leader of the Oppostion. Excellent for the govt. Excellent for anyone else that wants religion out of politics. He’d give us a good dose of just how batshit people like him actually are. I say start a petition.
Thuggish, like we said, yes. There is a certain kind of woman who finds physical violence attractive, I know, but most of us think that is a tad pathological.
Yes but as I say, which women, and how many? Most of the women I know grimace at the mention of his name, and all of them are contemptuous of his inability to keep his aggro to himself. And I don’t knew anyone, man or woman, including even quite virulent Ratty-haters, who wasn’t a bit disgusted by the infamous vicious handshake — not least because Howard (who was a cunning Ratty as we all know) was expecting it, knew it would be televised, and knew it would do Latham irreparable harm … especially with women.
Like Helen, I was always a Latho skeptic. Pity Chris Sheil took down the Backpages archive – be interesting to see what people were saying at the time.
FWIW, I think Latho tried to play up the boofiness to try to win over the (male) “Howard battlers”. If you can believe Megalogenis’ analysis in the Oz today (and I have my doubts about counting up occupations in the census and transposing it to federal electorates), Rudd is winning over Uteman by pumping money into construction and thus tradie jobs.
I suspect Latho might have been a bit of a sensitive type at school, and over-compensated with blokiness. Not that his “intellectual” writings were always that intellectual.
“This is interesting. Women in Australia tend to defy international trends and often tend to the Right in their voting patterns. I’ve never read any theory about why that might be.”
I seem to recall that makes up a very large section of Judith Brett’s book on the Liberal Party. I’m not game to summarize.
Oh and getting really OT: Michael O’Connor is actually in the ALP left, not the right, which tells you all you need to know about how little the factional labels mean anymore.
The Mad Monk further endears himself to women by advocating for a return to fault-based divorce.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25767454-12377,00.html
Rachel @ 53,
Doesn’t exactly endear him to men, either.
Private investigators would love it. Its just further evidence of how out of touch he is with everyday reality. Bring him on. Make him leader. Labor would be in power for decades.
Yes, a private investigator hiding under every mattress in the country to prove fault would be a popular move among court reporters, but I’m not so sure it would encourage women to vote Liberal.
Kim (51) “Like Helen, I was always a Latho skeptic. Pity Chris Sheil took down the Backpages archive – be interesting to see what people were saying at the time.”…
Turns out, you can, thru the magic of The Wayback Machine ( the links even work!)
eg
(From the ‘Labor surges ahead’ post, October 07, 2004, 2 days before the vote)
“There’s some very interesting comments about the limitations of polls, especially Newspoll’s phone polling, made in an open letter to Henry Thornton by Roy Morgan here: http://www.roymorgan.com/news/news.cfm
Add to this upto 18% still undecided, and go look at the article about how undecideds vote posted the other day on counterspin.
So don’t despair! The Rodent aint won it yet!
Posted by: Kim at October 8, 2004 11:19 AM”
This thread is very interesting for two reasons. Firstly, the overwhelming portrayal of Australian women as masculinity-hating and/or demure ladies in hats and gloves around whom one should say “ruddy” not “bloody”. Secondly, the almost charming naivete of extreme feminists of a certain age who think they are representative of Australian women. The feminist man-hating that feeds LP simply does not exist outside the 2 or 3% of Australian feminists who share this hatred. Many on this thread should get out and about a bit more
Whatever his faults, Lionel Murphy should be thanked for his steering no-fault divorce through the Australian Parliament.
The Mad Monk is calling his tome ‘Battlelines’. I think it’s meant more for internal Liberal Party consumption. It allows him to continue his campaign to push the Libs either further right. I want to see him lead the Libs. It would be so entertaining.
Traditionally there are many more small-c conservatives among the female half of the electorate – which historically was the cause of unease among socialists about female suffrage. Don’t judge the centre of the women’s vote by LP’s female posters, clever and lovely as they are.
That quiet conservatism is still true in many other democracies. But, like the Republicans in the US, the Libs are too wrapped up in playing our-dicks-are-bigger-than-their’s games to exploit it. I reckon Rudd, like Howard, appeals to many women precisely because he comes across as cautious.
The Mad Monk divorce deform proposal has already been attacked by someone, within his own party, who actually knows that his idea is crazy.
Senator Coonan, who used to practise family law, says she needs convincing.
“The no-fault divorce, as a principle, seems to have worked reasonably well since 1975,” she said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/13/2623676.htm?section=justin
Yep, ‘cos it would be so smart for the Libs to fight an election on changing the divorce laws.
DD@60, Don Aitkin’s Stability and Change in Australian Politics (IIRC — I studied it about 20 years ago) established that women tended to vote rightwards, as did older people (ie Shaw’s dictum about socialism and turning 30 held true). Haven’t read the Judith Brett referred to by feral sparrowhawk @52 and so don’t know where her data comes from, but Possum’s numbers on the demographic trainwreck for the Libs indicate that a huge generational shift has occurred, and Aitkin’s findings no longer apply.
I think the old ‘washing-up test’ might apply to leaders, as it does to prospective husbands. KR looks like he’d take turns doing the washing-up. MT looks like he pays someone to do it — and realistically, that someone’s going to be a woman.
#60 and #63, I’ll just reiterate what I wrote in 2003 and posted at #23:
As well as the specifics of Howard government policy and Coalition prejudices on issues which can be bracketed as gender/family/sexuality, we could also speculate that
* younger generations of women are more likely to be socially and culturally liberal and environmentally aware due to higher levels of education;
* younger generations of women with higher levels of engagement with the workplace and workplace issues are less likely to be impressed by union-bashing and certainly not likely to be impressed by WorkChoices;
* the declining but not insignificant minority of women not in the paid workforce with family responsibilities are not likely to respond favourably to neo-liberal economic, industrial and fiscal policies which squeeze public sector services, increase the precariousness of their male partenrs’ employment and increase indirect taxation.
The real elephant in the room has nothing to do with how right/left women are, but how reactionary the ALP has become.
I love a bunch of men commenting on a blog that that the women commenting on the same blog don’t know real women like they know real women. ‘Cause we’re all living little insular lives and have never met another woman who isn’t exactly like us, but you blokes are off with all the common folks all the time. LOL.
But the womens are small-c conservative! Yes, women do traditionally lean small-c conservative, and often put security at the top of their list of political priorities. Security in the sense of crime, finances, health etc. The idea that the right to control their fertility wouldn’t be part of that is a bit weird. Obviously work choices was part of that too. Probably the security that comes from knowing you don’t have to argue your right to leave a marriage, too.
As for gloved ladies with their no swearing, Sam, I know it might be confusing but really, most women appreciate many positive aspects of masculinity, and dislike the negative, bullying bits. Confusing! Why can’t they be consistent and just like everything men do, or nothing?!
Wow, ageist and sexist in a single phrase and a brilliantly original phrase to boot. And how old are you, Sam?
I’m guessing either under 15 or over 85. NTTAWWT.
Don’t feed them…
But it’s so much fun to feed them. Sam @57, teh Feminist Man-Haters, we are coming to GET YOU. We will destroyz you with our evil Feminist Man-Hating Powerz! Be Afraid, etc.
All your ballz are belong to us!!
Ballz, ew.
I blame cammille Paglia.
PC(71) ‘Ballz, ew‘ indeed…Who needz ‘em: thanks to Karim Nayernia and a bunch of Geordie lab nerds, sperm can be made from human embryonic stem cells, and there are plenty of gentically fatherless mice running around lab cages to show the next bit, the introduction of crypto-sperm to eggs of impeccable breeding, works to produce an embryo, which can grow up in a regular fashion, or have stem cells extracted from, to make crypto-sperm which can be introduced to a thawed egg, and so on.
Crypto-sperm from girl embryo stem cells should work, though I’m not sure that avoids all possibility of boy embryos resulting. Parthenogenesise now, avoid the rush.
You gotta give it to those Olde Greeke Mythe makers, they did a nice line in irony: Zeus’ awfully big parthenogenetic adventure produced a girl, Athena, while Hera’s couple of lashes at it made boys, Typhon and Hephaistos.
Just in case anyone is still interested in women, men, and the leadership of the Liberal Party, while doing something else I happened to come across the following figures from a Newspoll survey conducted between the 10th and the 12th of July, 2009.
Question
Thinking now of the leadership of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party. Which one of the following do you think would be the best candidate to lead the Liberal Party?
Total
Peter Costello: 36
Malcolm Turnbull: 16
Tony Abbott: 10
Joe Hockey: 20
Uncommitted: 18
Male/Female
Peter Costello: 38/33
Malcolm Turnbull: 19/13
Tony Abbott: 8/11
Joe Hockey: 20/22
Uncommitted: 15/21
18-34 years/35-49 years/50+ years
Peter Costello: 33/36/38
Malcolm Turnbull: 13/15/18
Tony Abbott: 12/9/8
Joe Hockey: 19/21/21
Uncommitted: 23/19/15
These figures come from the final page of this document. According to this document, the maximum margin of sampling error for these figures is plus or minus 3 percentage points. This particular Newspoll survey was based on 1,132 interviews among voters.
So, on the whole, Tony Abbott is not a popular candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Party. However, he is possibly more popular with women than men. According to this survey, 11 per cent of women think Tony Abbott would be the best candidate to lead the Liberal Party, while only 8 per cent of men think likewise. Tony Abbott also seems to be more popular with younger voters than older voters.
(The gender difference mentioned above does not seem to be statistically significant at the conventional, 95 per cent confidence level, although the age difference does seem to be statistically significant at this confidence level. The gender difference could, of course, be viewed as statistically significant at less stringent confidence levels.)
I’m just mentioning these figures since I happened to come across them, just in case anyone’s interested.
This may not be 100% on topic, but as long as we’re looking at the above figures with a gender lens, did you notice that none of the four candidates is female. I’m just mentioning it, yanno, just in case anyone’s interested.
As you were.
Very true.
I think these figures are interesting because they run counter to many people’s picture of reality. Take the most stark comparison, which is between the popularities of Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott as candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party. Malcolm Turnbull is more than twice as popular as Tony Abbott among men (19 versus 8 per cent). Among women, though, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott are in much more equal positions (13 versus 11 per cent). That’s pretty surprising.
James @74
Thanks for the hard data on Abbott and women voters. Anyone else got anything similar?
I tend to agree with those who say that in the main the women who disdain Abbott are those for whom Abortion/RU-486 are vote-determining issues, i.e. serious Feminists.
The Coalition vote-share among serious Feminists is unlikely to change if Abbott was leader or not. Hard to see how this voter segment is going to shipwreck the Coliation vote.
Two more polls and a professional opinion which suggest that women have no particular problem with Abbott:
Newspoll Dec 7th 2009 ‘Abbott Better Leader Than Turnbull ?’
26% women said Abbott better than Turnbull
18% women said Abbott worse than Turnbull
46% women said about the same
Age December 5th 2009 Turnbull v. Abbott:
21% men prefer Abbott
26% women prefer Abbott
Abbott polls better among women than Turnbull at the moment.
Sorry, that professional opinion from Nielsen pollster John Stirton </a?