Women Arrive in the Parliamentary Workplace

Despite achieving the right to stand for parliament, women’s role as wife and mother was expected to largely preclude political ambitions. Parliaments resisted the presence of women, even as Hansard reporters, although out of public view they filled administrative roles in the offices of parliamentarians and ministers. Politics remained a ‘two-person career’, with wives expected to contribute unpaid political support for their husbands, as well as managing family and household. The eventual inflow of younger women into parliament in the 1990s (in Australia, after the adoption of party quotas) led to a struggle to convert a masculine institution into a family-friendly one. Babies in the chamber could no longer be treated as ‘strangers’ and parental leave and childcare were needed. Women took on prominent roles in ministers’ offices, though such positions of influence could be perilous. This chapter tracks changing perspectives on the social expectations, organisational practices and institutional norms that served to exclude women from political careers or to constrain their contribution once they had arrived in parliament.