Q&A fails smart women

11 March 2015

I am often enthusiastic. This is seen as unladylike. Like Germaine Greer, a woman who isn’t ladylike either, my feelings inhabit my features. I accept there are consequences of wearing one’s heart upon one’s sleeve. I don’t accept that they are fairly slapped on.

I am also pleased to call myself a feminist. That is why I noticed that it was International Women’s Day on the 8th March, and why I sat down to watch the ABC’s special, somewhat patronisingly advertised all-women-panelled Q&A on Monday.

I usually find Q&A more boring than enlightening. Tony Jones allows too many chaps to dominate. Too many politicians too. And when there’s a smart women on board, he visibly forces himself to divert attention their way. He’s had lessons, good on him for trying: it still shows.

The best – for me – before last night’s was when Simon Sheikh, Founder of GetUp! and soon-to-be-unsuccessful Greens parliamentary candidate, fainted unbecomingly onto his speaking notes, right next to Sophie Mirabella. Her fastidious shrinking from what he presented as something contagious, said rather a lot about her quantum of solace. It wasn’t a good night for a powerful Liberal MP then, or the 2013 election night either.

Sophie never claimed to be ‘feminist’. Nor does Julie Bishop, Foreign Minister and, on the 9th March, one of Q&A’s stars. She said everything right about the entrenched cultural and economic obstacles to women’s rights to equal social and economic status with men.

Annabel Crabb chaired it all really well, but the next day I realised that not only our Foreign Minister, but not one panelist, got one question about their extraordinary achievements. Bishop was managing partner of a big law firm. She has unique experiences and must have views on the world’s problems and their impact on Australia. But nobody asked. One wanted to know whether she could do the job if she’d had children, and what she thought about women on boards and domestic violence. She spoke Feminist right back. As did the rest of the panel, which included a magnificently chequered Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay, a very coolly be-spectacled and articulate Best & Less chief executive Holly Kramer, and engineer and young Australian of the Year, Yassmin Abdel-Magied. And, of course, Germaine Greer.

I am very fond of Greer, not just Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and her remarkable book, The Female Eunuch made me realise that there was injustice

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Q&A fails smart women

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