Key points
- Federal Liberal Party’s ‘women problem’ can be traced to policy shifts under former Prime Minister and Liberal leader John Howard
- The party of choice for women for most of the 20th century, the Liberals achieved important milestones for gender equity in Australia
- The party must return to its ‘small l’ liberal roots to win back the support of women voters
The Liberal Party’s ‘women problem’ can be traced to Howard-era cultural and policy shifts that ended its standing as the party of choice for women for most of the 20th century, according to new research from Monash University.
Dr Blair Williams, from Monash School of Social Sciences, conducted one of the first academic analyses of the Federal Liberal Party after its loss at the recent 2025 federal election.
Dr Williams attributes former Liberal leader, and later Prime Minister, John Howard, with the ushering in of a more socially and economically conservative direction from the 1980s.
Four decades on, Dr Williams says the change in direction has manifested in a serious problem for the Liberal Party’s future.
“Howard completely remodelled the Liberal Party in his own image, abandoning many socially-liberal traditions of former leaders Robert Menzies and Malcolm Fraser,” Dr Williams said.
“In doing so, he sidelined many of the party’s moderates, especially its liberal feminists like Dame Beryl Beaurepaire who had lamented the Party’s increasing conservatism and the exclusion of women from policy input.
“More recent leaders, like Abbott, Morrison and Dutton, have channelled Howard’s leadership style and approach to gender equality policy, women voters and women in the party, to its detriment.”
Dr Williams’ research explores the party’s ideology, organisation, political representation, policy, and the electoral support it has received from women.
Her analysis argues the party’s genesis stands in stark contrast to the modern day Liberal Party, one of the most conservative political movements in contemporary Australia.
Women played a key role in founding the party in 1944, at a time when the inclusion of women as voters and party members was seen as radical.
The party negotiated structural equality for women at all levels of the party, and among its ranks were the first women to be elected to parliament and hold parliamentary positions.
“The early Liberal Party wasn't perfect by any means, and their policies tended to assume that women were primarily homemakers and mothers,” Dr Williams said.
“Yet the party’s recognition of women as voters and efforts to acknowledge their issues were groundbreaking for the time.
“While the ALP remained a blokey party that mainly spoke to working-class male voters, the Liberals spoke to women and were the first party to specifically target them during the 1949 election campaign.”
In addition to women’s participation in politics, the Liberals pioneered social liberal policies in its early years, achieving important progress toward gender equity through milestones like legalising divorce in 1959 and landmark childcare legislation in 1972.
But by the mid 1980s and the rise of Fraser’s Treasurer John Howard to party leader in 1985, the party was on the neoliberal path toward its current conservative position.
Dr Williams’ research argues Liberal leaders in the post-Howard era have continued this neoliberal approach, which is ultimately ill-equipped to deal with structural issues of gender inequality and continues to sideline women within and outside the party.
“It was no secret that the Howard Government opposed feminism, which it saw as a narrow ‘sectional interest’ of ‘elites’,” Dr Williams said.
“Howard immediately began dismantling hard-won gender equality measures that had made Australia world-leading in gender equality policy.
“The party of a ‘broad church’ has shifted further right, so it’s unsurprising that the values of the modern Liberal Party fail to resonate with many women voters or candidates.”
Read the research paper: doi.org/10.1111/ajph.70007
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