Her Rights at Work – Women in Parliament

A hundred years after women gained political rights in western democracies, their presence as political representatives was increasingly expected. However, increased presence in parliament did not necessarily bring equal opportunity to perform their role as representatives. While there was a new international norm of the ‘gender-sensitive parliament’, there were countervailing Westminster traditions of adversarialism and of parliamentary privilege. Both women politicians and women staffers often failed to speak out about sexual harassment, being afraid that complaints would be weaponised politically. Revelations in the wake of the #MeToo movement revealed how far national parliaments had fallen short as a safe workplace for women. In this chapter I analyse the obstacles to reform and how the #MeToo movement emboldened women in four Westminster parliaments, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, to say ‘enough is enough’.