I did this after an analysis on the
NSW election showed that just 13 women are sitting in the Lower House on the Government side. This is despite the fact that the Liberal / National Party women standing for election actually did very well by comparison to their male counterparts - 13 of the 20 women standing won their Lower House seats (65% success rate), compared with 35 of the 73 male candidates (48% success rate).
What I found in my preliminary analysis of the seats where pre-selection has occurred for the Liberal Party, National Party, Country Liberal Party and Liberal National Party was​ that 30% of the candidates standing for election for the Coalition are women. The numbers are:
- 44 female candidates
- 102 male candidates
- 9 seats still to pre-select a Coaltion candidate by the deadline on 23 April 2019.
This might sound like the Coalition has started to get its act together after a disasterous 2018 which saw the Julie Bishop & Julia Banks debacles and the loss of some very capable and experienced women in Kelly O'Dwyer, Jane Prentice and Ann Sudmalis. It certainly looks better than the gender imbalance on the candidate roll in NSW, where just 21% of those who contested the election for the Coalition, were women. however, as always, the devil is in the detail.
Just 14 of the 44 seats being contested by women at the Federal election are currently held by the Coalition. Five of these are marginal (classifed as being where a winning party receive s less than 56% of the vote). By contrast, 59 seats of the 102 being contested by men are currently held by the Coalition.
To put it in a nutsell, the male candidates have almost twice the change of success (57% versus 31%) as they have been preselected in safer seats.
Statistics on the ALP, other parties and the Senate to come in the following weeks.