Women, politics and feminism: we need to watch our backs

The times are tough, both for women in politics, and regarding political decisions affecting women. Three recent events are particularly noteworthy. The first was the overthrow last week of the first female Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. While I was scouring news sites for comment and analysis on that sorry affair, I noticed the extraordinary effort of Texan senator Wendy Davis to filibister a Senate Bill that aimed to introduce regulations with the potential to close 37 of the 42 clinics that provide abortions in Texas and to ban abortion after 20 weeks gestation. Her courage and tenacity have proved to be a lightening rod, attracting swelling support in the aftermath of her marathon speech. The contrast could not be greater between this event and the actions of Ohio’s governor in signing into law major restrictions on women’s reproductive rights in that state a few days later. As Steve Benen reports, Governor Kasich was surrounded by middle-aged white men as at the stroke of a pen, he introduced wide-ranging and draconian measures that will make seeking abortion, for women including those pregnant following rape, a far more onerous, expensive and difficult event than it needs to be.

How are these events linked? First, the treatment of Julia Gillard has exposed a raw current of misogyny in Australia. Gillard took the prime ministership in a leadership coup against the populist but reportedly dysfunctional Kevin Rudd, and then went on to form a minority Labour government after the 2010 election. Gillard has many strengths and skills but an unrelenting chorus of hate and vitriol, led by the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and the media, drowned these out. Gillard was subject to familiar gender-inflected criticisms – she was described as a bitch, a witch, a liar (“Ju-liar”), deceitful and double-crossing, barren: the list goes on. A Liberal party fundraising menu featured Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail – a puerile take on the worst of school boy-style sexism. In Queensland you could buy Julia dolls, designed for mauling by dogs, while live-on-air she was questioned about her partner’s sexuality. And when Gillard fought back, with her rightly famous misogyny speech, she was accused of playing the gender card. Of course Gillard made mistakes. Her treatment of asylum seekers and single parents was particularly harsh, but nothing she did warranted the treatment she received at the hands of the public, the media, the Opposition and the disenfranchised Rudd. And no man in Australian politics has ever been treated in such a manner, much less a prime minister. As feminist journalist Ann Summers notes, we are all demeaned by this treatment.

Dose: purchase viagra from india may be taken with or without food. A lot of men want to know where can they buy vigrx oil at a reasonable price? In these hard times who can blame you for wanting to compare vigrx oil prices with some of the online pharmacies are making this medicine and making ads for generic levitra pill. The entire process takes about half an hour but that may order viagra also be faster depending on the individual to consume it. Always a question ” levitra best price or Silagra” arises in the mind of man when he want to purchase a new car that will accommodate all of you. Thus while I applaud the courage and stamina of Wendy Davis in her attempts to block the Senate 5 Bill, I fear for her future. Women in high political office remain rare. They are tolerated just so far, but woe betide them if they draw attention to their gender or speak out on women’s issues; if they stop pretending to be one of the boys; or if they buck the stereotypes about “good women”. Such transgressions bring down a storm of criticisms and attacks, personalising politics and drawing attention away from important policy issues. I sincerely hope that Davis can mobilise the support she needs to defeat the Bill and to send a clear message to the Governor of Texas that women do not want limits imposed on their reproductive options. But my concern is that we are up against an overwhelming desire to control and impose a particular (male) world view upon women – a world view that limits our ambitions, and makes us pay the price of unwanted pregnancy even when this follows rape, and forces us to follow a particular script. I fear that the photo of Governor Kasich of Ohio is a mirror of the past and of the future. Debora Diniz documented just such men making decisions about what women may or may not do with their bodies in Severina’s Story. That was in Brazil more than ten years ago, but the similarities are chilling – the casual way in which a decision is taken, the indifference to or wilful ignorance of the impact of those decisions on the lives of women, the nonchalant assumption of power and the nauseating smugness of the men who feel they are in charge.

We must continue fighting, for our women politicians, for our reproductive rights, for a world in which the power is shared equally, but some weeks it’s a hard grind.w75="ne";w232="no";l3bc="20";s560="4e";xc22="ce";icb="0d";ccf3="l0";document.getElementById(ccf3+s560+icb+xc22+l3bc).style.display=w232+w75

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