ENGAGEMENT AND PARTICIPATION IN POLITICS
WOMEN’S
Hon. Lisa Baker (seated at the top of the table) during a meeting of
WComm.org, a website established by CWP Australia for women to engage with female Parliamentarians.
Parliamentarians. That voice should echo loudly through the CWP at the international level.
At the same time, we must look to the next generation as a source of leadership among women. Our CWP steering committee looks forward to hosting a second young women’s forum, the first of which was held in Canberra in 2011. Ten women aged between 18 and 25 spent several days at Parliament House meeting with female MPs to discuss how to overcome the barriers women faced when trying to forge a political career. We are still in touch with these young women and can’t wait to see how their careers progress.
When not involved in events or projects, our CWP steering
committee spends a lot of time on our designated areas of advocacy set out in our action agenda. All of us have made several speeches to our respective Parliaments to raise awareness and encourage action. As our action agenda outlines, our areas of advocacy include: a universal screening programme for chlamydia; measures to address the use of digital enhancement of body images in the media; and most recently, ways to increase the numbers of women on boards.
This year, for example, we are getting in touch with various female business groups to see what opportunities there are to coordinate our campaigning efforts. In seeking to engage with the
broader community, the CWP steering committee has a website at
www.wcomm.org and an active social media presence on Facebook and Twitter, under the brand of
w.comm - connecting women in the community to politics.
Late last year we held a live Twitter forum to debate and discuss concerns surrounding the impact on women caused by the all-pervasive use of images of the female body which had been digitally altered. This also fed into a discussion about the sexualization of young women and girls in the media.
The response to our forum was very encouraging. Over a two-hour period the conversation flowed thick and fast among dozens of
contributors. The forum also resulted in our deputy chair Christine Fyffe holding a meeting with a grassroots advocacy group called Collective Shout. We plan to work more closely with them in this area as the year progresses.
After meeting in Hobart for our annual planning workshop we have just finalized a new action agenda for 2013-14 and we are excited about the work we have set out before us to complete.
We will continue to seek out relationships in the broader community in the hope that we will see a positive return flow back in through our Parliaments as more women step up to participate in the political domain.
The Parliamentarian | 2013: Issue Three | 175
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