“It Wasn’t Funny. It Was Inappropriate”: MP Shares Confronting Sexual Misconduct Story On ‘Q&A’
"A male in the meeting thought it was appropriate for him to make gestures as if he was going to remove his trousers."
Industry, Science and Technology Minister Karen Andrews used Monday night’s episode of Q&A to speak about her experience with sexual misconduct in the workplace, describing a recent encounter in which a man in a stakeholder meeting she was in indicated he was going to drop his pants.
“A male in the meeting thought it was appropriate for him to make gestures as if he was going to remove his trousers,” Andrews recounted. “At that point, I called it as inappropriate behaviour, and I left the meeting.”
“What was going on there,” asked host Annabel Crabb. “Was that person just absolutely unaccustomed to the idea of dealing with a powerful woman, or deliberately trying to provoke you out of some sort of sense of pique?”
“Well, if I was to be generous, I would say that the individual concerned was not used to dealing with senior women in a workplace,” Andrews replied. “And probably genuinely, I think that was the issue. But the behaviour needed to be called. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t smart. It was inappropriate. And I think that women need to start calling out that behaviour as and when it happens.”
“There would have been no point in me continuing that meeting, and then complaining about it to my peers afterwards,” she added. “I needed to act, and I did.”
Andrews added that she got a written apology from the man the next day, “as I should”.
Asked if he remained in his job, she replied, “I don’t know. But he won’t be in my office again”.
Liberal MP Karen Andrews reveals that a male stakeholder made gestures “as if he was going to remove his trousers” in a recent boardroom meeting. #QandA pic.twitter.com/eeodfPvw7s
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) March 11, 2019
Earlier in the episode, Andrews and the rest of the panel spoke about a speech made by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on International Women’s Day, in which he said: “we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse”. Andrews described the remarks as “clunky”, but said she had personally found Morrison to be “very supportive of women”. Labor MP Linda Burney and Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young were less generous, accusing the PM of fundamentally misunderstanding why the fight for equality is so important.