Social Work - Theses
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ItemGendered 'gerrymanders': a study of women candidates in the 1997 Victorian local government elections( 2000)Women’s political citizenship, particularly the right to represent locally is under a cloud since the Victorian council amalgamations of 1997. No longer is local government ‘the home’ of women’s representation. A reputation it earned when more women were elected to local government than State or Federal parliaments. Women’s local representation in percentage terms has failed to show increases like those recorded at State and Federal levels. This study describes the demographic characteristics of the 1997 local government women candidates and their policy issues. The candidates were identified as family women as most were married with children. Family and friends were also the main sources of candidate support. Two thirds of candidates worked either part-time or were not in the paid workforce at all, although most were highly educated. This could be explained by the age of the candidates which was late forties to early fifties. Only 9 per cent of candidates were of non-English speaking backgrounds. The candidates had strong backgrounds in community organisations, but organisations of all kinds including political parties were not supportive of women candidates. Most candidates supported the goals of the women’s movement, and wanted to be elected to local government in order to ‘bring back local democracy’ and to improve services. The experience of women candidates in the 1997 local government elections illustrates the need to develop a gendered theory of women’s participation in the so called ‘public sphere’. These women were in general disconnected from publicly defined power, such as high income networks. It might be useful to describe them as ‘privately empowered’. Women maximised the power of their private identities and relationships to transpose the barrier of public powerlessness. While ‘privately empowered’ election campaigns are not likely to reward women with equal political representation, they do illustrate the inextinguishable intentions of women to pursue legitimacy in the public sphere. Neat borders do not surround the public and private spheres. This finding needs to be considered in future analyses of public/private theory. Just like the pioneering women earlier this century, women enter local elections as independent candidates. The goal of equal and diverse representation appears more remote since collapsing 210 councils into 78 giving political gatekeepers permission to recreate so called ‘local democracy’ only in their image.