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Winning not lecturing

By Graham Young - posted Monday, 22 October 2012


Foreign journalists and social media proclaimed it a success, while domestic political commentators, including me, canned it. So who was right? Does Julia Gillard's "I will not be lectured by this man" speech remake the woman, or will it ultimately remake the man? (It is apparently already remaking the language).

We asked this of 1018 people in one of our virtual focus groups and got an equivocal answer.

In a group where as many preferred a Labor government as preferred a Liberal one, 50% were inclined to agree that Abbott was a sexist, and 45% disagreed, meaning some are voting for an Abbott-led government despite thinking he is sexist. Voters also discriminate between sexism and misogyny ("How do you spell that?") with only 35% agreeing that he is misogynistic and 52% disagreeing.

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There is a gender element to these results with women more likely to agree with both these statements by about 5 percentage points.

However, the test of any political tactic is whether it moved votes in your favour or not, and on that basis the speech failed with our group. 28 percent said they were more likely to vote for the government while 40 percent said they were less likely.

This effect was driven almost entirely by men, with women being virtually equally divided on whether it would change their votes. This suggests that claims of sexism and misogyny appeal primarily to a female audience, but that the government has about as large a share of the female vote as it can get, at least on this basis.

The risk to them is that by overtly raising this argument they don't improve their position with women, because they can't, but they further erode it with men.

Some respondents thought that at last we were seeing the "real Julia", and there is probably some truth in that as attitudes to sexism appear to be not just gender-based but to reflect voting intentions.

Inasmuch as the Prime Minister is in tune with her constituency and tribe, then accusations of sexism will come more readily to her than to her opponents.

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Sexism is something which is experienced by both genders, but definitely more by women than men. We probed our audience on their experience of sexism and found that 33% of women claimed it happened to them regularly as opposed to 10% of men.

This left 48% of women who said it was infrequent and 64% of men.

When analysed by voting intention I was intrigued to find that 45% of those women who would prefer a Labor government claimed to be frequently sexually discriminated against, but only 15% of those who would prefer a Liberal said the same. This is a huge difference.

Even more fascinating was that a similar though less pronounced difference existed between ALP and Liberal preferencing males.

So perceptions and world view are significant factors in whether you experience sexism or not, or are the victim of it.

This was reflected in responses with Liberal voting women likely to retail stories about earning the respect of workmates, or having seen work situations change over the years so that men might now be likely to be the target of sexism from women.

The attitude is mostly pragmatic, and sexism is linked in with a number of other aggressive things that occur in workplaces and that need to be coped with or managed. Respondents in some cases felt that victims brought it on themselves by the way they behaved.

Labor voting women were somewhat different. There was less of the "get over it" approach, but plenty of nuance. Sexism is something that you can oppose, but also remember with humorous fondness as well: "I have been propositioned and chased around my desk a few times :)"

But while the specific speech may have failed it seems that the general Labor approach is having some effect on Abbott's standing. When you look at the responses on preferred prime minister they are less kind to Abbott than they were.

Two years ago "honesty" was listed as a key reason for voting for him, but now it has all but vanished from responses, and critical language is blunter.

This hasn't mattered in the past, because while Abbott has had a low personal rating his party has been ahead on the issues that count. Recently Labor has started to recover, largely because it has found issues it owns that also count, like the NDIS. The image of the PM also seems to be improving with the word "strong" joining her list of personal attributes.

Abbott has also stumbled by being too inflexible and clinging to the issues that have got him where he is rather than adapting as circumstances change.

Our polling doesn't show sexism as a significant voting issue, which is why at one level the PM's attack has been successful. By diverting attention away from the economy and boat people she has diverted Abbott from successful battlegrounds. She has also taken control of the agenda.

Abbott was genuinely surprised by the attack, and allowed himself and his frontbench to be drawn into the controversy, distracting him from issues which long term might do him more good.

In this respect, while Labor lost the debate, it is improving its position in the war.

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About the Author

Graham Young is chief editor and the publisher of On Line Opinion. He is executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, an Australian think tank based in Brisbane, and the publisher of On Line Opinion.

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