Prime Minister Robert Menzies holds last press conference in Canberra on 20 January 1966. Credit:Stuart MacGladrie And it was while he was prime minister that a special policy unit to monitor, and champion, women's employment was established in the Department of Labour and National Service. In 1944 Menzies responded to lobbying from the powerful conservative organisation, the Australian Women's National League, for gender parity within the organisational ranks of the new party. The AWNL also won the right to continue operating as a separate women's organisation within the Liberal Party. Menzies similarly responded to pressure from Liberal women such as Victorian senator Ivy Wedgwood, as well as women's organisations and the ACTU, to establish a Women's Bureau similar to those in Canada and the US, to monitor trends in women's employment, which was beginning to increase markedly.

In 1963 William McMahon, who was Menzies' minister for labour and national service, established a women's section in his department; its initial focus was research. In early 1968, after pressure from employers and further lobbying by Senator Wedgwood and others, the section was expanded to a much larger Women's Bureau and given the brief to monitor equal pay and start developing a childcare policy, according to the excellent history of the bureau by ANU researchers Lani Russell and Marian Sawer. It became an authoritative and influential monitor of trends in women's employment and a forceful advocate for equal pay and paid maternity leave. Its annual publications were legendary for their meticulous research and up-to-date surveys of all matters to do with women in the workforce. One of Howard's first acts once he won office in 1996 was to abolish the Women's Bureau. He also got rid of the Women's Statistics Unit at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which used to compile an annual compendium of all aspects of women's lives in Australia. He left the Sex Discrimination Commissioner position vacant for 14 months while he hacked away at the powers of what was then called the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, slashing its budget by 40 per cent (meaning it lost one-third of its staff), stripping its ability to hold public hearings, removing the power of sex, race and other commissioners to handle complaints and requiring that all future complaints under HREOC's acts be directed to the Federal Court, where complainants would be required to lodge a $1000 filing fee. At the same time, Howard slashed childcare funding, changed family benefits to advantage stay-at-home mothers and penalised mothers who stayed in employment with high effective tax rates, and refused to introduce paid maternity leave despite pleading from within his own party.

Not surprisingly, these "white picket fence" initiatives had the desired effect of discouraging – one might even say "forcing" – women from the paid workforce. Then, to reinforce that the government believed it was women's primary job to "have one for Mum, one for Dad and one for the country", in 2004 the government introduced a baby bonus of $4000 per child. The fertility rate shot up from 1.77 to 1.96 under this cash-for-kids policy. So when Howard said two weeks ago that there would never be equal representation of women in Parliament because "women play a significantly greater part of fulfilling the caring role", he neglected to mention the brutal measures he adopted as prime minister to force women into these roles. Although Howard's landslide 1996 victory unexpectedly brought a record 13 Liberal women into the House of Representatives, and most were re-elected on his coat tails in 1998, he did nothing to ensure this fluke became entrenched in party structures and future pre-selections. Now the Liberal Party has the embarrassment of not just having the lowest number of women in Federal Parliament since – well, since Howard! – but no possibility of changing this, because the party won't do what Menzies did and adopt quotas.

I don't have fond memories of Sir Robert Menzies, but I will give him this: he was realistic about the need for women to be part of modern Australian public life. I look forward to his protege explaining on Sunday why he opted to ditch this part of the legacy and turn the clock so far back, and while we are on it, why, according to the promotions, just one of his 15 interviewees is a woman. Twitter: @SummersAnne