Chickonomics Blog

And their elevation continues the me too-ism of the election campaign, almost down to the detail of their names: Julia and Julie.

Both will be responsible for the industrial relations portfolio, although Gillard will have the added responsibility of education.

We will witness a spectacle never seen in Australian politics: two senior female politicians going head to head.

Already they are at war with each other after the expensively and very well-dressed Ms Bishop earlier this year criticised Ms Gillard for behaving like a fashion model or a television star in her attempt to get media attention.

Ms Gillard hit back, accusing Ms Bishop of being the mistress of the trivial issue.

Labor MPs call Ms Bishop “the prefect in pearls” - a comment on her polished, practised parliamentary style.

The child of cherry growers, her grandfather and mother were both local mayors and now Ms Bishop is the partner of former Perth Lord Mayor Peter Nattrass - their 10-year relationship began after she divorced husband Neil Gillon.

Ms Bishop is a high-flying lawyer who has been education minister and minister for aging and she has been considered a leadership contender for both state and federal politics for some time.

The other women who have risen to the top in this election include Australia’s first lesbian minister - South Australian Senator Penny Wong, heavily promoted to be in charge of the climate change and water portfolios that Kevin Rudd says are core business for his government.

Ms Wong was born in Sabah, Malaysia, and moved to Adelaide when she was eight. She boasts that she is the first Asian-born woman to enter federal parliament.

A lawyer who worked for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and an adviser to the Carr Government on forests policy, Ms Wong was Labor’s campaign spokeswoman during the 2007 election.

Senator Wong has a demonstrated ability to nail the political argument on the workforce and government responsibilities she represented as a shadow minister, and helped make government advertising a killer political issue.

New Health Minister Nicola Roxon is also a lawyer, a former associate to a High Court judge and the mother of a toddler.

She is engaged to former Labor staffer Michael Kerrisk, who has taken on childcaring duties while working as communications adviser to the State Services Authority in Victoria.

As health minister, Ms Roxon will have an insight into the pharmaceutical area of her portfolio - she is the daughter of a pharmacist and spent much of her teenage years working at the family business.

Kate Ellis, just 30, becomes the youngest-ever federal minister following her first term in parliament. She has been given the job of youth and sport minister because of her youth.

The Adelaide MP studied international relations at university and has worked as a research officer for state and federal MPs and as an adviser to two South Australian ministers, including Deputy Premier Kevin Foley.

Labor’s housing and status of women minister Tanya Plibersek is a mother of two and married to Michael Coutts-Trotter, the head of the NSW Department of Education.

Despite these achievements, the feminisation of Australian politics is proceeding at an incremental pace in world terms.

And despite an increase in the number of women MPs in the 2007 election, they still make up about one quarter only of the House of Representatives.

There will be between 38 and 40 women in the House of Representatives in the new parliament, depending on the results in two close seats.

This is up from the 35 women in the previous parliament, but at this rate of increase it will take another nine elections before we approach equal representation.

That means it could be 2034 before women make up half the nation’s parliament.

But, although still small in number, women in this parliament will have more senior roles than ever before.

LOS ANGELES (Special to the NNPA from the Los Angeles Sentinel) - Empathy is just a small, seven-letter word but it’s significance is packed with such a strong influence that it could change an entire country, at least that’s the message the potential First (Black) Lady of the America is putting forth. For Michelle Obama, who is not simply the wife of presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama or the mother of their children but also a woman in her own right, empathy is how she connects to the over 300-million people living this country. And, that connection provides an understanding of what this country needs to create a positive future for generations to come.

“Without empathy, you don’t get change,” said Michelle Obama in an exclusive interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel. “You don’t get the kind of fundamental change that we need, and when you don’t get that fundamental change then we all hurt.

“…We know what we need to do,” she continued, “but without that empathy, that core sense of mutual obligation, we don’t get the right answers. We need that first, and then we can go through the issues that are affecting the Black community-from healthcare, to education, to an ineffective criminal justice system, to the dwindling of blue-collar jobs. Everything that we are lacking as a society, right now today, is hitting the Black community hard. But we don’t get to those answers until we get to our souls.”

With the Sentinel, Michelle shared private moments of being a woman, wife and mother that have allowed her to see the world through compassionate eyes, and reveal her genuine accessibility and appeal to other women across the country. She offers a sense of comfort in knowing that the future of this country could rest in the hands of this strong, Black family unit.

Right from the start, Michelle was candid in her responses, giving a sense of down-to-earth, openness about her persona. She responded “absolutely not” when asked if she had ever imagined herself being in this position of future First Lady and admitted that she was a “reluctant political participant” for quite some time. But it was her husband’s steadfast belief that one has to be able to impact change through politics that pulled her in.

“From the beginning of our relationship there have been a lot of unexpected, wonderful twists and turns,” said Michelle when describing her marriage to Barack as an amazing journey. “We’ve affected each other’s lives in pretty significant ways, and obviously the most significant way he’s been affecting my life is getting me more involved and encouraged about politics.”

But what the couple was always on the same page about was the notion of family unity. She said the two have structured their small family, which includes daughters Malia (9) and Sasha (6), based on what they saw growing up.

Explained Michelle, “Both Barack and I came from similar households - not in terms of race, he came from a bi-racial family and lived in Hawaii - the values that we were raised on were the same. There’s nothing more important than family and community. That’s always the priority.

“…I think what keeps us strong is that we remember those values. … We’ve stayed really close to our families and rely on the broader family unit. We want our girls to grow up understanding that at the core, there’s nothing more important than that.”

Keeping the family first has been the commitment they have made throughout their marriage. So, when the time came for the decision to be made for Barack to run for presidency in 2008, there was no exception.

In talking it through with Barack, Michelle wanted to be assured that the decision would work out for their family and that they would be able to structure their lives to make sure it didn’t impact their children. Once she received answers she felt were sufficient or satisfactory, she was on board.

“You have to make sure that home-base is strong and that you’re solid in that relationship,” she explained, “because if you’re not solid, then it makes it more difficult to impact the rest of the world.

“…We have to make sure that young men and women, boys and girls growing up, if they don’t see that type of stability in their own home then they can look at some model out there, something that gives them the vision for what life can be for them. … The hope is that [Barack and I] offer a model.”

Michelle will be the first to admit that it’s not always easy being a wife and a mother. She said that trying to make the right choices in the best interest of the family is a constant struggle, particularly when it comes to balancing work and family. And in that sense, she feels she is like most women.

“We all agonize about that work-family balance,” said Michelle, who has most recently worked at the University of Chicago Medical Center as vice president of community and external affairs and where she also managed the business diversity program. “We always feel like whatever we decided to do we worry that it’s the right thing to do, whether it’s working part-time or staying at home. I think at every level women are racked with guilt and feel like they’re not doing enough. I am no exception, and I can’t say that I’ve completely resolved it.”

“What I know is that life changes and I never see one set of decisions as permanent. I look at it as this is what I’m doing for this time and make sense at this time in my life and I don’t try to predict what the future will hold in terms of those types of decisions.”

Those here-and-now family decisions are visible across the country, as women and families struggle to make ends meet.

“It has become harder for the average family to just keep it together,” Michelle said as she reflected on her travels across the country. “If you couple that with the lack of healthcare, the absence of quality childcare, and public education … we’re going backwards, and backwards motion is impacting women and families at the core.

“We as women have to start speaking out about the struggles that we’re facing and what we need to do as a country to move us back into a place where families have a chance. Those are the kinds of things that I care deeply about because it’s stuff that I’ve felt.”

It’s in her words of this struggle to keep the family together and a mother’s work-family balance that start to form an agenda for a First Lady to address.

Bottom line: She doesn’t take the job.

The young woman in the movie (a Gen Y) works so very hard to pursue her dream job. She jumps into an industry with which she has little familiarity and no discernable qualifications. She rises to the most impossible challenges, tackling tasks she had no idea how to do with ingenuity and boundless energy. She relies in part on the wise coaching of a Boomer colleague and skirts the deep resentment of an X’er who feels passed over. In the end, she succeeds in meeting the extraordinarily exacting standards of her over-the-top competitive Boomer boss.

Then she quits.

Okay, so she also sacrificed true love and lasting friendships in pursuit of her professional goal, but — let me emphasize — she won!

And she quit.

Now, let’s fess up. How did you really feel about that ending? I don’t mean in the car on the way home from the theater after you’ve had a chance to reflect. I mean in the moment – what was your immediate, instinctive, knee jerk reaction? It may tie pretty closely to your generational leanings.

Most Y’s I’ve asked have really liked the ending. The heroine rose to the challenge, learned a lot, and moved on to find something that strikes a deeper chord in her soul. One of my Y friends explained: “For me, although obviously there was some suspense, I knew going in that she had to decline the job — that’s just what a Y would do — it was just a matter of how.”

Most X’ers liked it, too. The pinnacle she’d reached in the corporate world was, afterall, clearly pretty unstable. Yes, she was on top — today — but, if nothing else, the movie had made obvious how being up one day in no way guaranteed a place tomorrow. Wise to get out now. One of my X’er friends elaborated: “For X’s, the movie is about what’s wrong with organizations and why it’s a mistake to hitch your wagon to any one person or any one organization for too long or without a sense that the organization will love you back.”

Personally (okay, I’m a Boomer), I found the ending, well, ridiculous. Why would you work so hard and not take advantage of winning? If she’d stayed in the job and done something positive with the spoils, that would make sense to me. Perhaps she might have served as a more humane role model for the next trainee — changed the corporate culture for the better. Or, maybe she could have even done something more grand — targeted some of the corporation’s resources toward a charitable goal — used her new-found power to make the world a better place.

Of course, after reflection, I get and respect the happy, balanced life she chose to lead . . . really. I guess I do.
Although extreme, this movie may be more of a parable for our corporations than we would like to admit. Many of the movie’s themes are ones that our research bears out. Gen Y’s are entering the workforce with enthusiasm and confidence — and succeeding on many fronts. They are finding Boomers a bit schizophrenic — both warm mentors and off-the-wall corporate warriors. And many X’ers have not exactly welcomed them with open arms.

The party is campaigning on issues important to women, but its desire to improve maternity services provides the link to Ms. Lake.