Federal election: Australian women want action on these three issues – but men not quite so sure

Updated

A clear majority of Australian women are in favour of gender rules to get more female MPs elected, efforts to boost pay in female-dominated industries and better access to abortion services, Vote Compass data shows.

Key points Australians not opposed to female leadership per se, Vote Compass finds

Conservative voters don't see gender as an obstacle to getting into politics

Liberal Party's gender target called "a fantasy"

While many men are also in favour of those changes, their views are more mixed.

Women back rules to help change make-up of Parliament

Overall, Vote Compass respondents are only narrowly in favour (51 per cent) of political parties having rules to see equal numbers of women and men elected to Parliament.

But more than 60 per cent of women support rules such as gender quotas, compared with 39 per cent of men.

Women are also more in favour of government action to boost wages in female-dominated industries and want to see abortion services made more accessible.

La Trobe University associate professor Andrea Carson, a member of the Vote Compass advisory panel, says the results on gender quotas are in line with previous research on the subject.

"What we found out of that was Australians weren't opposed to female leadership per se, but conservative voters don't recognise gender as being an obstacle to getting into politics," she said. "Whereas progressive voters from Labor and the Greens very much saw gender as the number one obstacle and that's why they were supportive of gender quotas."

The Labor Party has an affirmative action policy that sets a mandatory quota of 40 per cent of women to be pre-selected in winnable seats, rising to 45 per cent in 2022 and 50 per cent in 2025.

The Liberal Party does not have gender quotas but has adopted a target of 50 per cent female representation in Parliament by 2025.

Dr Carson says the Liberal Party's target is "a fantasy", given that female representation in the party was higher when John Howard led the party more than a decade ago.

"That was because they had the support of backroom committees under the likes of Judith Troeth that really tried to push women through the pipeline, but those mechanisms have fallen away," she said.

"So I don't see how voluntary targets have any means of being able to achieve what their ambition is."

In this election, the Labor Party has preselected women candidates in 44 per cent of House of Representative seats, compared with 27 per cent for the Coalition.

Voters are in line with their parties on this question: 67 per cent of Labor voters and 74 per cent of Greens voters are in favour of rules to boost the number of women in Parliament, while 53 per cent of Coalition voters and 60 per cent of One Nation voters are opposed.

Women back wage hikes in female-dominated industries

Women and men also show distinctly different attitudes to the idea of mandating wage increases in traditionally female-dominated industries.

While 69 per cent of women think this is a good idea, men are more divided, with 41 per cent in favour and 30 per cent opposed.

If elected, the Labor Party wants to restructure the Fair Work Commission to enshrine equal pay, and it has promised a 20 per cent pay rise for early childhood educators as the first step towards lifting pay levels of workers in female-dominated industries.

Over-55s are the biggest supporters of mandated pay rises in female-dominated industries, according to Vote Compass, with 61 per cent in favour. That compares with 50 per cent among those aged 18 to 34.

As expected, Labor and Greens voters are strongly in favour, while more Coalition and One Nation voters are opposed to such mandated pay increases.

Vote Compass data also reveals mixed support for extending government funding for preschool to three-year-olds, with 41 per cent in support, 26 per cent neutral and 29 per cent against.

A small majority of Labor supporters (52 per cent) support their party's policy.

Widespread support for better access to abortion services

More than 71 per cent of voters say abortion services should be more accessible than they are now.

Women (76 per cent) are more strongly in favour of better access, although a majority of men agree (65 per cent).

Vote Compass respondents in Tasmania, where access to abortion has been a running political issue, recorded the strongest support of any state, with 78 per cent of voters supporting better access.

Jo Flanagan, chief executive of Women's Health Tasmania, says surgical abortion services in the public system are extremely limited in Tasmania and many women travel to Melbourne for terminations.

Tasmania was home to four out of the top 10 electorates with the highest levels of support for more accessible abortion services. Voters in the electorates of Clark, held by independent Andrew Wilkie, and the Labor-held seats of Franklin, Lyons and Bass all recorded support of 78 per cent or more.

Lyons and Bass are held by Labor by less than a 6 per cent margin.

Support for better access to abortion services is greatest among 18- to 34-year-olds, 79 per cent of whom said they were in favour, compared with 65 per cent of over-55s.

More accessible abortion services were also supported by a majority of voters who are Catholic (56 per cent), Protestants (53 per cent) and other religions (54 per cent).

Ms Flanagan says the findings suggest access to termination services is no longer a faith and ethics issue.

"It's about equity of access to a health service and it's about what women need in order to be able to live a full life in the community and be in control of their reproductive selves," she said.

It is estimated that at least 83,000 Australian women have terminations every year, according to the Australian Women's Health Network.

Labor goes to the election with a commitment to build an abortion clinic next to a public hospital in Tasmania, to require public hospitals to offer termination services as part of their Commonwealth funding and to push the NSW government to decriminalise abortion.

The Vote Compass data shows that voters from all parties want better access to abortion services, with support particularly strong among Labor and Greens voters.

About the data

Vote Compass responses have been weighted by gender, age, education and place of residence to match the Australian population, creating a nationally representative sample.

The sample size for this report is 301,013 respondents.

Find about more about the methodology in this explainer.

Topics: federal-election, children---preschoolers, women, access-to-education, preschool, federal-elections, greens, liberal-national-party, one-nation, alp, abortion, australia

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