The History and Impact of Women in the Parliament of Western Australia: From Golden Age to Disappointment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite their significant contributions to parliament and the Western Australian community, the role of women in the WA public sphere has historically been overlooked due to cultural and structural prejudice. To remedy this erasure, this article assesses the body of scholarly work that has focused on women serving as members in the Parliament of WA. Finding that the literature identifies three phases of women’s engagement with the Parliament of WA, these phases can be periodised as follows: the first is the ‘age of individuals’ where a select few pioneering women entered the parliament due to a variety of historical specificities. The second we term the ‘age of Labor women’, as the literature widely acknowledges that the 1983 Burke government adopted affirmative action policies that saw a significant increase of women MPs hailing from the Labor Party. The third we label the ‘age of disappointment’, as the literature underscores the bipartisan deprioritising of women’s policy issues in the 1990s–2000s, alongside the existence of continuing barriers to gender equality in Australian parliamentary politics. Suggestions for further research are also identified, including the impact of neoliberalism on women’s representation, and the emergence of intersectionality as a key paradigm in women’s studies. .