Not just good girls in public life

The key is to understand that Queensland was, and is, a frontier. It is still emerging, experiencing late maturity - anything still seems possible. It has allowed women to emerge in numbers and in ways that are not found elsewhere in the country. As influential men left the state for jobs elsewhere, they freed up positions of power for those in the “out” group, allowing the conniving, the cheesy, the off-centre and the truly talented to take their places. As more women have moved on to the public stage, the way has become easier for the next wave.

The place of women in the law in Queensland is instructive. The Courier-Mail, announcing news of Quentin Bryce’s admission in 1963, reported: “Two judges’ associates, a magistrate, a Deputy Registrar in Bankruptcy … and a woman, were admitted as barristers by the Full Court.” A current Supreme Court Justice, Kate Holmes, “recalls being told when she applied to join the Queensland public service in 1977 that, as a married woman, she could not expect employment which might be at the expense of a male applicant with a family to support.”

The rise of women in public life in Queensland, whilst notably illustrative of issues of gender, is also a story about class credentials. It helps - indeed, may even be essential - to have come from a “good family”, to be Anglo-Saxon, middle class and the graduate of a private school. Those who failed to hold on to power - and there are a number of stunning examples - literally lacked class.

A critical factor in the rise of women in public life has been the importance of patronage. Bligh was mentored by Beattie; Leneen Forde, who was the state’s governor from 1992-97, says she was prepared for the position by Goss and Jim Soorley. It would be hard to find a senior woman who cannot point to a male colleague whose help was essential to her rise. Married women are particular beneficiaries. In a gossipy culture, mentoring coffee meetings are less subject to conjecture if the participants are known to be married.

I first met Leneen Forde in 1976. She is the no-nonsense daughter-in-law of Frank Forde, who was prime minister for eight days in 1945. Canadian by birth, she is friendly and clever. In that year I was working at the first women’s shelter, established with funds from the Whitlam government and then defunded by Fraser. We gave mainstream women’s organisations very short shrift. I was nominated by more militant sisters to approach the Brisbane Zonta Club, of which Forde was president, to ask for money to keep the shelter open. The state government was not considered an option.

The Zonta meeting was vibrant and strident. Many of the businesswomen attending had not heard of domestic violence, and were deeply offended when asked to support a service they believed either contributed to family breakdown or did not insist that women never return to the contemptible cowards who battered them. Arguments flowed. As I was leaving, discussion continued. Leneen Forde leaned over to me and said: “Don’t worry, honey. You’ll get your money.” We did.

In 1983, Quentin Bryce arrived in Nambour as chair of the Prime Minister’s Women’s Advisory Council to sell the Sex Discrimination Bill. I was working there and involved with a local women’s information and support group. We had invited her to speak at a public meeting at the Nambour Civic Centre.

Letters to the Editor of the Sunshine Coast Daily captured some of the local anxiety about the possible effects of the proposed legislation. They were colourful and fantastic. Unisex toilets would become the norm; the United Nations, described by one correspondent as “Satanic”, would control workplaces and families. Lyrics of songs (Stand by Your Man) would be censored to remove offending “sexist” intentions. In the August 24, 1983 edition of the Daily, the President of the Caloundra Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Graeme Haycroft, remarked hotly: “The general thrust of the legislation could … have the effect of undermining the traditional nuclear family values … and would ignore the reality of free-enterprise commerce … I will always prefer to have a female secretary, if for no other reason than I find women prettier than men.”

Bryce had a tough time in regional Queensland. Her public meetings attracted a mixed crowd of supporters, feminists, the religious right and the slightly crazy. She handled the hugely rowdy meeting in Nambour with charm, insouciance and wit.

Bryce and Forde are superb illustrations of a particular genre of successful Queensland woman in public life over the past two decades. It is no coincidence that they were both governors of Queensland, though five years apart. They are both lawyers, married with five children each. They lived near each other for many years in the same leafy Brisbane suburb, and both come from relatively privileged backgrounds. They are feminists, risk-takers, unique and unforgettable women who cultivate and participate in numerous networks of women friends, with a strong focus on legal circles. Most importantly, both women have a touch of the different. They are characters.

Both have attracted attention for not being “serious enough”. Bryce’s impeccable dress sense has been dissected and criticised. Forde’s down-home plainness, her disinterest in fashionableness, drew its own regular comment.

If the body politic in Queensland is a white male, then the entry of women into its being is best compared to an invasion by a foreign body, like an infection - even causing the production of a mutant being. As with biological processes, some “foreigners” are absorbed and integrated, as long as they are not too numerous, and especially if they remain benign in nature. An increasing number of women fit this category. They look and sound like appropriate and well-behaved women. They are married; they have children. They are facilitators rather than negotiators. They follow the paths assigned and they have learned well from other women in public life in Queensland. Spectacular “Fallers from Grace” are often not well behaved, well dressed or well rehearsed. These women who have violated the script have sometimes been expunged like a foreign body - banished, excised or surgically removed.