Dr Diann Rodgers-Healey
For the first time in Australian history, after the 2025 federal election, not only does the Albanese Government have the largest Labor caucus since Australia was formed by the federation of six former British colonies in 1901, as PM Albanese said after the election, there are now more women than men in federal cabinet in the Australian Government.
The 2025 federal election, overall, marked a major milestone for gender diversity in parliament. The 48th parliament features more women than ever before. There will be at least 68 women in the House of Representatives — an increase from the 58 elected in 2022 and 40 in 2019.
“Labor’s staggering 94 seat win in the lower house of Parliament is for the first time dominated by women, ” as Tanja Kovac states. “Of the 16 new seats secured by the ALP, 56 per cent were victories powered by Labor women candidates, including the sensational unseating of two male political leaders – Peter Dutton, leader of the Coalition (defeated by Labor’s long-term candidate for Dickson, Ali France) and the Greens leader Adam Bandt (defeated by Sarah Witty, a first-time Labor candidate in the seat of Melbourne).”
Women’s Minister Katy Gallagher told ABC radio it’s a testament to Labor’s continued work towards gender equality over three decades, having introduced quotas in 1994. “The thing about gender equality in the Labor Party is everyone in the caucus is for gender equality. That conversation or that argument has been won,” Gallagher said last week.
While Labor’s Caucus and Cabinet are now gender equal and the ‘teal’ independents are dominated by women, and the Australian Greens have elected Larissa Waters, the Coalition has for the first time in its 80-year history elected a woman leader in Sussan Ley.
In her first speech as leader, Ley recognised that gender equality is a big issue for the Liberal Party.
“I want to [say] right here right now, we need more women in our party. We need more women in our organisation and we need more women in this party room,” Ley said, while stopping short of backing formal gender quotas.
Former Liberal frontbencher Simon Birmingham recently said the Coalition should consider “hard, fast and ambitious” quotas for women in parliament, with representation so low. “I struggle to think of any alternatives if there’s to be a new direction that truly demonstrates change and truly guarantees that the party will better reflect the composition of modern society,” he said in a post on LinkedIn.
Gender quotas in political parties is a global phenomenon. More than 130 nations have modified their constitutions, electoral laws, or party rules to specify a threshold of women to be selected or nominated to a political body. Voluntary party quotas, in which individual political parties specify the percentage of nominees that must be women exist in nations such as the United Kingdom and Germany.
Although it is amply evident that gender equality advances at a slow pace, putting in place the strategies to achieve it and committing to them for the long-term, are crucial. As The Conversation’s Elise Stephenson and Blair Williams state, “For the first time in Australian history, there will be more women than men in federal cabinet. This comes more than 120 years after women were first allowed to stand for federal parliament, and decades after Labor established its gender quota strategy,” In 2002 the ALP introduced a 40 per cent quota for either of the sexes to be represented by no less than 40 per cent on party electoral lists. (National Platform and Constitution 2009, Article 10a.) This was the 40:40:20 rule (40% women, 40% men, 20% of either). In 2015, the party set a target of 50% female representation by 2025.
While recognising that Gender quotas in political parties are a way to ensure a minimum percentage of women are selected for political offices, whether through nomination or election, and to increase women’s representation in parliament and address gender inequality in politics, policies that are aligned to advancing gender equality when in government, solidify trust in the party advocating gender quotas. Throughout its history, Labor has progressed and established many of the reforms and initiatives that continue to drive gender equality to this day. The ALP has adopted a 50 per cent gender diversity target for government boards to be achieved within the first term of a Labor government and 40 per cent for women’s representation in Chair and Deputy Chair positions on government boards by 2025 (National Platform 2018).
Though “inspiration can be taken from Labor’s strong gains achieving, and surpassing, gender parity” parliament as a whole “falls a long way short of reflecting the diversity of the electorate because not enough diverse candidates are being chosen to run for seats.” The Conversation’s Elise Stephenson and Blair Williams ask, “But have we achieved equality?” In addition to pointing out that women are critically underrepresented in the parliamentary Liberal and National parties with women making up just 28.5% of the former coalition across both chambers and women comprise just 21% of Liberal and National MPs in the lower house, Stephenson and Williams emphasise that diversity beyond gender diversity needs addressing for better representation of the Australian population. They state, “it’s clear from a deeper analysis that parliament as a whole still doesn’t mirror the people it represents.”
“Beyond gender, almost one quarter of Labor members in the lower house identify as culturally and linguistically diverse, 1% as LGBTQIA+, 2% with a disability and 2% as First Nations. In the Senate, almost one in seven identify as culturally and linguistically diverse, 6% as LGBTQIA+, 6% as First Nations and none with a disability. This is the first election where Gen Z and Millennial voters made up a larger share of the electorate than Baby Boomers. Yet only three Labor parliamentarians are younger than 35.”
These authors observed that The Global Institute for Women’s Leadership assessed the number of candidates from diverse backgrounds – women, self identifying LGBTQIA+, CALD, disability and First Nations – who were preselected by the main parties for the election. The results were:
- Others (independents and minor parties) 12%
- Greens 30%
- Labor 26%
- Coalition 24%
In 2023 Victoria’s first Indigenous Labor senator, Jana Stewart, was spearheading the push, beyond Labor’s gender rules to boost the number of MPs from non-English-speaking backgrounds. Sewart said, “While gender quotas have been successful in aspiring to and achieving gender balance, they haven’t worked for multicultural communities and First Nations communities. Women and men of colour have been left behind; it’s time to undertake the work to address the gap.”
Moving forward, with a focus not just on cultural and linguistic diversity but also on gender, disability, and other aspects of identity, to benefit the nation comprehensively, all political parties need to adopt Diversity Quotas, requiring a certain percentage of their candidates to be from specific underrepresented demographic groups, like women, indigenous, LGBTQIA, disability and ethnic minorities, in parliament and within the party structure. This would enable improved policies, social cohesion and substantive representation of minorities in nation building and strengthening our democracy.
.There is still more work to be done to ensure that our parliaments are representative and inclusive of all Australians. Perhaps adopting a targeted Diversity Quota and achieving it will be the next milestone for the ALP Government.
sources:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-15/larissa-waters-greens-leader/105296840
https://hir.harvard.edu/equal-representation-the-debate-over-gender-quotas-part-1
https://doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2022.2026813
https://www.alp.org.au/our-history/labor-governments-and-women
https://percapita.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/The-Way-In-2024-FINAL.pdf