Keeping the Gates? Women as Ministers in Australia, 1970-96

Contrary to expectations based on 1980s west-European research, women's representation in Australian cabinets over the last quarter century has exceeded their proportional strength in parliaments. The paper examines this and canvasses explanations. Consistent with west-European findings, Australian women ministers are overrepresented in social portfolio areas and underrepresented in defining and physical resource mobilisation areas. The paper considers implications and explanations of women's work in cabinet. 'There are only two ways of getting into the Cabinet. One way is to crawl up the staircase of preferment on your belly; the other way is to kick them in the teeth.' Aneurin Bevan quoted in Hennessy (1986, 94)