Gender Representation In The Australian Parliament: A Feminist Historical Institutionalist Lens In Federal Candidate Selection, 1994-2022

Australia was the first country in the world to grant most women the right to vote in national elections and to stand for the Commonwealth Parliament and was also a world leader in implementing a whole-of-government policy framework aimed at advancing gender equality.Nevertheless,these pioneering achievements in women’s political rights have not translated into equal representation.While reaching a record high of 44.5 per cent in the 2022 Federal Election,the percentage of women elected has mostly stayed in the 2530 per cent range over the past two decades.The gradual rise in female representation in parliament over the past few decades is evidence that women continue to encounter barriers to political engagement.The thesis examines the pattern of gender selected and elected to the Australian Federal Parliament from 1994 to 2022 and incorporates a feminist historical institutionalist approach to understand the gap between Australia’s history as a pioneering democracy and its slow and uneven progress towards gender equality in Parliament.FI has defined formal institutions as codified rules,with enforcement and legitimacy,and informal institutions as customary elements,traditions,moral values,religious beliefs and norms of behavior.Political parties are well known to serve as important gatekeepers for candidates seeking public office.By comparing the selection process of two major parties(the ALP and the LIB)and the strategies they employ in addressing women’s political representation,the thesis contends that parties utilize informal practices of candidate election that both consciously and unconsciously interact with gender equity rules to interfere with women’s political representation.Despite the fact that more research is being done to unearth the ’secret garden of politics’,there are still gaps in the understanding of how candidate selection affects gender balance in Parliament.The thesis offers a novel perspective on the secret garden of Australian politics by providing useful insights into the gendered nature of formal institutions,the operation and importance of informal rules and practices,the relations of power within and across institutions,and gendered mechanisms of institutional continuity and change.It is essential to examine the interactions between formal and informal institutions in order to comprehend the persistence of inequality and the challenge of transformation.