When ‘equal’ does not mean ‘the same’: Liberals still do not understand their women problem

“Women’s” issues are once again playing a significant role in the election debate as Labor and the Liberals trade barbs over which parties’ policies will benefit women most. In the latest salvo, the opposition has announced a $90 million package to combat family and domestic violence.

However, perversely, the Liberals’ women’s policy may be being constrained by their very concept of equality. That conception worked very effectively in the Coalition’s successful populist campaign against the Voice referendum. Peter Dutton and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price argued true equality involved treating everyone the same. They therefore claimed the Voice referendum was divisive and would give Indigenous Australians additional rights denied to non-Indigenous Australians.

In Dutton’s view, “egalitarianism” involves “pushing back on identity politics”. This in turn means emphasising people as individuals rather than as members of social groups.

However, that conception of equality is arguably compounding the Liberals’ “women problem”. It helps to explain the debacle of the Liberals’ original opposition to public servants working from home (WFH) and their subsequent humiliating policy backdown.

Director of Redbridge polling, Kos Samaras, argued the WFH policy was particularly unpopular with women, and had helped drive many women previously alienated by cost of living pressures back to Labor.

Dutton admitted the Coalition had got the policy wrong after “listening to what people have to say”. Anthony Albanese quickly accused the opposition leader of not understanding how women and men in modern families manage their lives. Labor also suggested Dutton couldn’t be trusted not to reintroduce his WFH policies if elected.

Astonishingly, Shadow Minister for the Public Service Jane Hume stated the WFH policy had gone through “all the appropriate processes”, including apparently being taken to shadow cabinet.

Yet, somehow those processes had not rejected a policy that would have a particularly detrimental effect on women. After all, in a highly gendered society, women still tend to carry the majority of caring responsibilities. These include looking after children, so flexible work is particularly important to them.

Nonetheless, Hume claimed “it was not a gendered policy”. She blamed the backlash on a Labor and trade union disinformation campaign that suggested the policy would be extended to the private sector.

The formal Liberal WFH policy had indeed been intended as a populist attack on federal public servants. However, not only do public sector conditions often influence private sector ones, but Hume had suggested it would be good if the private sector could “instil the sense of discipline that we want to instil in the public service”.

The WFH debacle reflects a Liberal failure to recognise the specific circumstances women face in a highly gendered society. This in turn means policies can affect women differently from men. It is a direct consequence of thinking equality means treating everyone the same, thereby reducing people to abstract individuals regardless of social structures and forms of social inequality that can disadvantage particular groups.

The lapse is particularly surprising in Hume’s case, given she officially co-signed the report into the Liberal party’s 2022 election defeat. The report emphasised that the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, “was not attuned to the concerns of women and was unresponsive to issues of importance to them.”

As a result, deputy leader of the Liberal Party and Shadow Minister for Women Sussan Ley promised to listen to women and bring them back to the Liberal Party.

However, both Hume and Ley also have a history of downplaying structural forms of inequality.

As an assistant minister in the Morrison government, Hume was criticised for suggesting women’s poor superannuation position was due to financial illiteracy rather than emphasising structural issues such as low pay in female-dominated professions and career interruptions due to caring responsibilities.

Meanwhile, Ley had discounted Labor criticisms of gender-blind Morrison government budget measures by arguing:

what you hear from the opposition is this long, ongoing, bleak, dreary narrative about entrenched disadvantage. And, you know, it’s just so last century. I see the opportunities for women in the modern world […].

Hume’s defence of the proposed restrictions on public service WFH was that women were also taxpayers and so had an interest in ensuring taxpayer-funded public servants were productive.

Her comments were reminiscent of then treasurer Morrison’s notoriously gender-blind response to criticisms that his inequitable tax cuts were more likely to benefit men, because men were generally higher paid than women. Morrison totally missed the critics’ point, asserting :

You don’t fill out pink forms and blue forms on your tax return. It doesn’t look at what your gender is […].

More recently, Ley has been criticised for supporting the abolition of Labor’s free TAFE policy, claiming it was unfunded, hadn’t been properly evaluated: “if you don’t pay for something, you don’t value it”.

However, the ACTU has argued the policy had particularly benefited financially stressed women and First Nations people in the outer suburbs and regions.

Furthermore, Dutton struggled to answer when a reporter pointed out that the Liberal campaign launch had mainly focused on men, and asked what he offered modern working women. Dutton emphasised the implications of his home-buying policies for homeless women, his record of protecting women from domestic violence and that both men and women would benefit from Liberal economic policies. But he didn’t mention policies specifically designed to address gender inequality.

By contrast, a Labor answer would have emphasised a slew of government policies specifically aimed at improving gender equality. These include addressing issues such as historically low pay in female dominated industries, especially those that reflected an undervaluing of feminised caring work. Labor’s policies recognise that women are structurally disadvantaged in the Australian economy.

All too often, the Liberals still don’t seem to get it. Treating people the “same” doesn’t take into account that various social groups are disadvantaged in Australian society. Consequently, what are intended to be general policies can affect some social groups differently from others.

Good policy takes such issues into account. The Liberals have not learned sufficiently from the major failings of the Morrison government, whose policies were regularly criticised for being gender-blind.

Yet, the Liberal party once had a more nuanced conception of equality. An earlier social liberal-influenced view both acknowledged patterns of social disadvantage and believed government had an important role to play in addressing it.

However, the party has increasingly moved away from social liberal perspectives. This is despite the efforts of more moderate Liberals, including key Liberal feminists. Now “social liberal” perspectives are more likely to be found among some of the Teal independents, many of whom would once have been at home in the Liberal Party.

The failure to return to a more nuanced version of equality is not only contributing to Liberal policy missteps in regards to women. It is also making it harder for Dutton to differentiate himself from an electorally damaging, anti-woke, “strongman” association with US President Donald Trump.

After all, Trump also believes equality means treating people the same. This is exactly how he justifies his attacks on “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

Dutton is reportedly preparing an additional policy pitch to women, as new polling confirms the Liberals’ share of the women’s vote is falling.

However, if Dutton and Ley really want to listen to Australian women, and make a more effective Liberal appeal to women voters, they need to develop a broader understanding of equality that takes structural disadvantage into account.

Carol Johnson has received funding from the Australian Research Council