I completed my undergraduate degree in International Relations at the Australian National University, majoring in Strategic Secuirty and Arabic Language. I spent a semester studying in Muscat, Oman as a part of my degree. After receiving First Class Honours for my undergraduate thesis, on gendered patterns of interruption in the Australian Senate, I was awarded a scholarship to broaden my research on women in political leadership and authority at the University of Canberra’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.
My doctoral research focused on the relationship between language and gender, and the impact it has on conceptions of authority and blame. While undertaking my doctoral research, I also presented at conferences around the world on topics such as the political roles of first ladies. During this period I was a teacher’s assistant on a number of undergraduate courses delivering lectures, running tutorials and marking assessments.
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)”
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."
An earlier version of this paper was presented the 2019 European Conference on Gender and Politics.
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 paper 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.
INSTITUTIONS
