Gender Archive

Final Labor candidates announced

I have recently been working on a project where I broke down the gender of all candidates from the Coalition, Labor and the Greens. The Greens and the Coalition both finalised their list of candidates a few weeks ago, but it has been impossible to find a list of Labor candidates, and earlier in the week eight Labor candidates still had no profile, or even their name, on the ALP website.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Tuesday about the number of women standing for the three political forces who are standing statewide, using research I had done for the Women’s Electoral Lobby. At the time the ALP was eight candidates short of the full 93, and refused to provide a list to the journalist.

With nominations being posted gradually on the NSW Electoral Commission website, it has been possible to fill in the gaps and identify all 93 Labor candidates.

Overall, the ALP is running 66 men and 27 women, or 29%. The Coalition are running 73 men and 20 women, or 21.5%. The Greens are running 47 men and 46 women, or 49.5%. Interestingly, Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party list 85 candidates by name on their website. I couldn’t identify the gender of three of their candidates, but among the other 82, the party is running 54 men and 28 women, or 34.2%. This is more female candidates than either of the major parties.

Nominations close at midday today, followed by Legislative Assembly ballot draws at 2pm and the Legislative Council ballot draw at 3pm. Over this weekend I plan to make my final update to each seat profile, with the final list of candidates and a review of my political assessment that I made when I first wrote the guide.

Maps of federal MPs by gender

A year ago I made a map where I colour-coded seats in the NSW parliament according to gender. With the rise of our first female Prime Minister, and the impending federal election, I figured it would be worth making a similar map for federal electorates.

After the fold, I have maps showing the gender of each federal MP after the last federal election.

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Gender balance in NSW Parliament

I was looking the boundaries of the federal seat of Grayndler earlier today when I noticed that all five state electorates that overlap with Grayndler are held by female MPs, along with a number of other neighbouring seats. I thought it would be interesting to get an idea of how the gender balance in the Legislative Assembly is distributed geographically.

There are 25 women in the NSW Legislative Assembly, out of a total of 93 MLAs. Each party has the following gender balances:

  • Labor – 17/51 – 33.3%
  • Liberal – 5/23 – 21.7%
  • National – 1/13 – 7.7%
  • Independent – 2/6 -  33.3%

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