Let Her Finish: Gender And Deliberative Participation In Australian Senate Estimates Hearings

Thesis, Bachelor of Philosophy (Honours), University of Canberra

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Joanna recently came into the public eye following a Radio National interview on her research for her thesis: Let Her Finish. After receiving First Class Honours for her thesis, she was awarded a scholarship to broaden her research on women in leadership and corruption at the University of Canberra’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis. She is the first PhD candidate to be accepted into Virginia Haussenger’s 50/50 by 2030 Foundation. Joanna’s main areas of interest are gender politics and Indigenous politics. She has been fortunate to have a wealth of experiences. While completing her degree in International Relations at the ANU, she spent a semester at the University of Nizwa in Oman, where she researched the complex experience of modern Middle Eastern women. In 2015, Joanna was the winner of the ACT Telstra’s Young Business Woman of the Year for her work in an Australian start­up company. Her treatment as a woman in the male dominated start­up world heightened her interest in feminist research.

In 2016, Australia ranks 54th in the world for representation of women in Parliament, with women This inevitably inspires discussion about women in parliament, quotas, and leadership styles. Given the wealth of research which suggests that equal representation does not necessarily guarantee equal treatment, this study focuses on Authoritative representation. That is, the space in between winning a seat and making a difference where components of communication and interaction affect the authority of a speaker. This study combines a Discourse Analysis of the official Hansard transcripts from the Senate Estimates Committee hearings, selected over a 10 year period between 2006 and 2015, with a linguistic ethnography of the Australian Senate to complement results with context. 

Let Her Finish: The Gendered Nature of Interruptions and Deliberative Participation in Australian Senate Estimates Hearings (2006-2015)

Journal Article

Richards, Joanna. 2017. “Let Her Finish: The Gendered Nature of Interruptions and Deliberative Participation in Australian Senate Estimates Hearings (2006-2015)” Australian Journal of Political Science 52(4): 550-564.

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The Inextricable Madame President: How Corruption Affects Women Heads of Government

Journal Article

Richards, Joanna. 2018. "The Inextricable Madame President: How Corruption Affects Women Heads of Government." British Journal of Political Science 48(3): 659-690.

An earlier version of this paper was presented the 2019 European Conference on Gender and Politics.

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In theory, all those elected to Parliament enter office with equal legitimacy and authority. In a modern democracy this should guarantee all citizens have their interest represented equally. However, an inability to transform descriptive representation into substantive representation has been demonstrated throughout a number of countries. This study focuses on authoritative representation, that is, the space in between winning a seat and making a difference where components of communication and interaction affect the authority of the person speaking. This study combines a Discourse Analysis of the official Hansard transcripts from the Senate Estimates Committee hearings, over a 10 year period between 2006 and 2015, with a linguistic ethnography of the Australian Senate to complement results. Results show that, although women are certainly in the room, they are not afforded equal authority. Women’s access to the speech floor (Edelsky 2008) in the Senate is limited; they given proportionally less time to speak, and interruption, gatekeeping tactics, and the designation of questions significantly different in nature to those directed to men all work to limit women participation in the political domain. 

While there has been a surge in interest, little work focuses on the conceptual foundations of the relationship between women in high political office and corruption. Contributing to the growing body of literature on women executives, this article clarifies how generics may impact the public perception and political longevity of women in office. Contrary to other work which suggests the prescriptive stereotype of ethical morality creates more obstacles for women in leadership, this pa- per argues that generic prescriptions cannot be examined in isolation. Competing generics can mitigate the impact of corruption on the political popularity of a woman. A two-staged approach is used to examine the relationship between women in office and corruption scandals. First, a macro-analysis of all women who have held a chief executive position in politics and been formally charged for corrupt behaviour is conducted to identify trends. A key trend identified is that women retain public support if allegations of corruption are believed to be politically motivated. Moreover, the acts that are construed to be corrupt in order the charge or dismiss women differ significantly from what is widely understood as corruption. Case studies are then used to identify the different roles generics played in two distinct and dissimilar situations, Dilma Rousseff and Yulia Tymoshenko. Particular attention was paid to generics which seem to be universal to the concept of ‘woman,’ including ethical, maternal, and transformative prescriptions. A key point of discussion in this paper is the serious repercussions that stem from the lack of conceptual clarity surrounding corruption. Further- more, the importance of regional context when studying both women inn politics and corruption is highlighted. This article adds to the literature on gender and corruption by providing evidence to suggest that women do not suffer from a loss of public support in response to allegations of corruption. I suggest that in some cases allegations of corruption can in fact bolster the support for women.

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