Women called to republican cause

By Louise Dodson
Chief Political Correspondent
The Age, 22 June 2001

Fewer women supported the republic because the Australian Republican Movement had failed to fully consult and involve them, the movement's deputy chairwoman, Susan Ryan, said yesterday.

The former Labor minister said a people's movement was needed to build momentum for a republic.

Delivering the Deakin University lecture on women in leadership, Ms Ryan said that if women had supported the 1999 referendum on the republic as strongly as men, it might have succeeded.

She urged women to become involved in the republican movement and cited the example of early Australian feminist movements such as the Women's Electoral Lobby and federation activists Maybanke Anderson and Vida Goldstein as evidence that women liked to be involved in constitutional change.

"This is our moment in the nation's history and we must not let it pass us by. We owe it to those federation activists for whom public political activity was so novel and so strongly resisted by society to bring women into full partnership in the national enterprise," she said.

The former senator rejected arguments that fewer women voted for a republic because they were obsessed with British royalty.

Rather they needed to be consulted and involved, she said.

"A mother struggling to support a couple of children on a low and irregular wage is unlikely to respond actively to an academic argument about the reserve powers, however elegantly phrased.

"She may well, however, welcome an invitation to a local community event where, while the children are enjoying themselves designing a republican logo, her opinion about being an Australian is taken seriously."