Toxic Parliaments And What Can Be Done About Them

This open access book shows how the #MeToo movement and revelations of sexual harassment and bullying have spurred on reform of the parliamentary workplace in four Westminster countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Long-standing conventions included extreme power imbalances between p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sawer, Marian, Maley, Maria
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Cham Springer Nature 2024
Springer Nature Switzerland
Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:1
Series:Gender and Politics
Subjects:
Gender
Gender studies, gender groups
Harassment
MeToo
Parliament
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Politics and government
Public administration
Social groups, communities and identities
Society and culture: general
Society and Social Sciences
Westminster
ISBN:3031483286, 9783031483271, 9783031483288, 3031483278
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This open access book shows how the #MeToo movement and revelations of sexual harassment and bullying have spurred on reform of the parliamentary workplace in four Westminster countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Long-standing conventions included extreme power imbalances between parliamentarians and staff and a lack of professionalised employment practices. Codes of conduct and independent complaints bodies were resisted on grounds of parliamentary privilege: the ballot box was supposedly the best means of holding parliamentarians accountable for their conduct. The taken-for-granted status of adversarial politics and its silencing effects also rendered gendered mistreatment invisible. The authors examine the institutional backdrop and the different trajectories of reform in the four countries, with most detail on the dramatic developments in Australia after angry women marched on parliament houses in 2021. They show how the different parliaments have responded to escalating evidence of misconduct, the role of policy borrowing, and the possibilities of lasting institutional change.
ISBN:3031483286
9783031483271
9783031483288
3031483278
DOI:10.1007/978-3-031-48328-8