Pollies' daughters are doing it for us all (SMH)
.........But daughters in politics are indeed a force of their own. Having daughters makes male executives more generous to their female employees, according to a 2012 study, Fatherhood and Managerial Style. And where politicians are concerned, the effects of daughters are readily identifiable.
The Yale economist Ebonya Washington, in her 2008 study, Female Socialisation: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers' Voting On Women's Issues, Yale economist Ebonya Washington found that there was a distinct gap between the way male and female members of Congress voted on women's issues, but every daughter born to a male congressman closed that gap, on average, by one-quarter. That is to say men changed their minds on women's issues more and more with each daughter they fathered.
This is exciting news, because it means in legislative terms that Tony Abbott is now 75 per cent female, which explains not only his conversion on parental leave, but also his recent interest in really nice shirts.
Don't just accept the Abbott example, though. Paul Keating, who entered Parliament in 1970, declared in his maiden speech the increasing number of women in the workforce was ''something of which we should be ashamed''. Two daughters, a quarter of a century and countless bracing sessions with Summers later, he had come around to a federal childcare system of which his 1970 self would have disapproved.
Then John Howard was elected, in 1996, and cut childcare funding. He was openly of the view that women should be supported in their decision to stay at home with their children. But eight years later, by which time his beloved daughter Melanie was 30, a successful lawyer and contemplating a family of her own, he introduced the 30 per cent childcare rebate.
Bob Hawke's daughters changed the way he communicated with a nation.
I continue to suspect Kevin Rudd's daughter of teaching him how to tweet, a grave intervention, as history will no doubt affirm.
Former United States vice-president Dick Cheney, a man so relentlessly hard-**bleep** that he shot his own mate while hunting and wasn't, let's be honest, all that sorry, quietly defied his own president in 2004 when George W. Bush sought federally to outlaw gay marriage, because his lesbian daughter was happy, in love, and planning a family.
So on this International Women's Day, here's to daughters. Here's to mine, who I hope will do whatever they **bleep** well please, except, of course, insofar as that might prove inconsistent with my own preferences. And here's to Tony Abbott's. Whatever anyone says or thinks about this particular paid parental leave scheme, you three chicks have played a blinder.
March 9, 2014
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