By Romy Stephens
This year’s local council elections have been record-breaking when it comes to female representation.
Not only did the Yarra Ranges elect its highest number of female councillors, but the highest number of women elected to councils was also seen across the state.
But while it’s been a positive year for women in local government, some Yarra Ranges candidates have raised concerns about the challenges women still face when running for leadership roles.
Amy Muratore and Bec Brannigan ran for Streeton Ward and Walling Ward respectively.
The pair both said they experienced trolling and sexism online on a regular basis.
“My tagline was mum, teacher, advocate, local and I would wake up with ‘oh congratulations, you opened your legs and you’re a mum’,” Ms Muratore said.
“Really that was about the fact that when we look at Council’s services a majority of them are used by mothers.
“You know that they are just smart arse comments but it was daily towards the end.
“I got some pretty bad comments about my looks. An example would be ‘oh finally someone who looks f**kable is standing for Council’.”
Ms Brannigan said she had similar experiences, recalling numerous nasty social media messages.
“I had to add two other admins to my page just so we could keep on top of the messages that were coming in,” she said.
“People were posting public comments in relation to my looks, my bangability, mostly they were all around that.
“One comment was ‘when the low cut dress means that she’s asking for it’ or something like that.”
But online trolling wasn’t one of the only challenges Ms Muratore and Ms Brannigan said they faced during the election.
Ms Muratore said there were significant financial challenges for women who were balancing work and running a household, particularly when it came to competing against retired men.
She added that she felt as though she was constantly justifying her capability and qualifications.
“Basically, it’s a six month long job interview and we had to do it for a really long time to convince the community that we were qualified, skilled and up for the task,” Ms Muratore said.
“Whereas, blokes can announce their candidacy the week of and nominate, do six weeks campaigns, throw a bunch of money at it and perform really well.”
Ms Brannigan said she was often asked how she would balance the role and her family commitments.
“Constantly being asked how will you have time for this if you have kids, that I found really frustrating because I know that other male counterparts didn’t get asked that same question.”
Roxanne Horn, who ran for Chandler Ward, said she didn’t receive any sexist trolling. But she said she also felt the need to regularly justify her qualifications.
“I did have people diving really deep into my background, wanting to know how exactly I was qualified,” she said.
“It does seem to be a thing that men can say ‘I’m qualified’ and people say ‘oh ok’…There’s sort of that skepticism when females say they’re qualified.
“I actually thought that being 2020 we’d come so far, I was really shocked and disappointed to see how badly females were treated during the campaign, and how much more we were criticised.
“I saw examples where men got away with a lot of stuff that women would have been scrutinised for.”
Former Chandler Ward Councillor and 2020 Walling Ward candidate Tony Stevenson said he didn’t experience any sexism or trolling.
“I had some other people say ‘I would think differently about that matter’ but they were respectful,” he said.
“I had nothing and that’s what sort of shocked me.
“I still worry that here we are, it’s 2020, it’s just the lack of respect and the attitude that some people have.”
Mr Stevenson and Ms Horn said changes in the Local Government Act 2020 provided encouraging steps forward.
Such changes included not needing to register a home address on authorising material and councils needing to now provide adequate childcare provisions for all councillors.
“It’s just small things like that, that support women in running so they don’t have to deal with the safety concerns,” Ms Horn said.
Meanwhile, re-elected Ryrie Ward Council and Yarra Ranges Mayor Fiona McAllister said she also didn’t experience any negative experiences online during this year’s election.
“I’m on social media but I have learnt a degree of caution around that, based on the experience of other councillors, and not just female councillors, but also based on experiences with social media broadly,” she said.
“Every candidate that was running for the first time seriously had to be very active on social media and I’m sure that probably exacerbated the problem.”
Cr McAllister said she didn’t know how to solve the issue of online trolling, but encouraged people to call it out.
“I do encourage a good community debate on issues and on policy positions, that is absolutely right and we want that, but when it becomes personal about issues like appearance that’s just not on.
“What we can do is not be bystanders when it happens, so if you see it playing out on social media and a personal attack on an individual … express a view that it’s not acceptable behaviour.”
There was a record number of women elected to councils across the state and in the Yarra Ranges this year.
With four female councillors elected to Yarra Ranges this year – the highest since the council was formed in 1997 – gender balance has improved from 11 per cent to 44 per cent.
That’s on track with results across Victoria, with 272 women elected to councils, making up a total of 43.8 per cent of councillors.
Voices of Women (VoW) president Sue West said it was “a fantastic outcome.”
Her organisation is a non-for-profit based in the Yarra Valley that worked to support female candidates running for Council this year.
“I hope the women enjoy their time in local government. I hope the men enjoy working with the women and see it’s not a power grab, it’s just working together,” Ms West said.
“There may be some changes to the way things are done but that’s OK, it’s not a competition.
“We will now see some more female-friendly decisions come through without as much debate as there has been in the past.”
Ms West said sexist trolling was a feature of this year’s election, but she believed the work of grassroots groups like VoW and the female candidates themselves put pressure on people to vote for equal representation.
Meanwhile, Cr McAllister said it was good to see more diversity in the current Yarra Ranges Council, but there was still room for improvement.
“I think the diversity of the council we have now is great, we’ve got different age diversity and clearly different gender diversity,” she said.
“Ultimately, we all want councils and government to be representative of our community and that’s from all walks of life, from different gender diversity, different ethinic backgrounds and different ages.
“You don’t want everybody to think the same, that’s not good democracy.”
Ms Muratore said she hoped speaking out on the challenges women still faced when going for leadership positions.
“We’re in 2020 but we’re not there yet,” she said.
“That is really frustrating and I want to make sure we are working towards a world where it’s easy for women to put their hands up and they feel safe and as qualified as men.”
