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Author
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Topic: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR WOMEN IN THE A.L.P. (AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY)
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germaine
recent-rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2991
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posted 21 September 2002 04:33 PM
Three cheers - some action at last. A group of women in the Australian Labor Party, left and right wing, are rallying today in Melbourne to listen to some prominent women in the Party and the Union Movement discuss equal representation in the Party. Parliamentary parties in Australia predominantly operate like a "boys club" and despite the fact that women have been in Parliament for years we are still treated like little women who should be at home with the kiddies. The women in the Labor Party believe that because women comprise 51% of the voting public we should be taken more seriously. We should be nominated to run in at least half of the winnable seats and we want this written in to the party's constitution - men have been running things for a long time, they've had a good run and their failures far outweigh their successes - look at the situation in the Middle East, even on the domestic front women would have to be able to do it better - women have an inherent understanding of family values, health and education services and yes, even compassion for refugees - there needs to be a balance and we, in the Labor Party, are still fighting the good fight. I would be interested to find out how other Parties, in other countries, approach this.
From: Australia - and no there are no Kangaroos in the streets | Registered: Aug 2002
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Cate
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 2958
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posted 23 September 2002 03:18 PM
In Canada,the federal NDP's approach to getting women to run has met with limited success. Although the NDP always has a greater percentage of female candidates than the other parties, the number of female candidates is never even close to the 50% goal, and often includes disproportionately large numbers of female candidates in clearly unwinnable ridings (such as in the provinces of Quebec or Alberta where the federal NDP has never made much progress, although some might say the federal NDP has never really made much progress anywhere in Canada.) The candidate selection process in the last election was as follows: for any nomination to be approved by the federal party, there must be at least one affirmative action candidate contest the nomination OR the riding executive must demonstrate that it has done a comprehensive candidate search for an affirmative action candidate. Affirmative action (acc. to the NDP) means a woman, aboriginal, person of colour, person with a disability, young person etc. etc. etc... in short anyone who is under represented in Parliament. Any woman who successfully won a nomination was entitled to some extra money for their campaign from the Agnes McPhail fund... however, I think that less than 1/3 of the candidates in the last election were women. A lot of people were disappointed in the process for 100s of different reasons. My view of the process is that a lot of women who contested the nominations were being set up to fail and were encouraged to run just to make the party look good. The same process was in place in 1997... in Saskatchewan (arguably one of the better provinces for the federal NDP) the federal office put a freeze on nominations at one point because no women had been nominated. A series of women contested each subsequent nomination so that the freeze would be lifted but there was grumbling in the women's caucus that most of the women who contested the nominations were being set up to lose and the whole process was a sham.
From: out in the west | Registered: Aug 2002
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