Sarah Hanson-Young Says Greens Members Tried To Undo Her Preselection Because She Was Pregnant
"It felt like their aim was to break me, to bully me out of my job."
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young shared today that members of the Australian Greens tried to undo her 2006 preselection when they found out she was pregnant, claiming that they hadn’t been given all the relevant information when they voted for her. She shared the story as part of a speech slamming the sexism she’s faced over her political career, which she said has only gotten worse over time.
“For close to ten years I have, for the most part, let sexist slurs slide. I didn’t want to react. I thought that staying quiet and not making a fuss would eventually make it stop,” Hanson-Young said at the Women in Leadership summit in Adelaide today.
“I convinced myself that not giving it oxygen would force it to fade away. That the arc of the universe bent toward justice, it was only a matter of time before things would change. I was wrong.”
She went on to detail the different ways sexism has impacted her over her decade in Parliament, and if you had any doubt that sexism is still alive and well in politics today, you’d do well to listen to this speech. To start, Hanson-Young described the sexist slurs she’s copped from politicians and the media alike, the kind of stuff she never expected to hear in the workplace. She described being slut-shamed by other politicians, including the time David Leyonhjelm yelled across the chamber that she should “should stop shagging men”.
She also made clear that this is not something Australian politics has moved past — the Leyonhjelm incident, for instance, was just this year.
“Over the years, instead of going away, the slurs got louder and the men using them bolder,” Hanson-Young said. “It felt like their aim was to break me, to bully me out of my job. They never completely shut me up, but there’s been plenty of times that they came close.”
One of which, she said, was the attempt to shut down her preselection, a story she has previously detailed in her recent book En Garde. In her speech today, Hanson-Young described her elation at discovering, shortly after she was preselected for the top spot on the South Australian Greens Senate ticket in 2006, that she was pregnant — something she’d been told would be near-impossible due to a medical condition.
“It felt like their aim was to break me, to bully me out of my job.”
“Perhaps it was youthful naivety or the excitement of the campaign, or both, but not once did I think my decision to be a new mum while starting my political career was unreasonable,” she said. “I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I’ve always worked hard. I was taught from a young age if you wanted something, you go get it yourself. I never thought anyone would complain or try to stop me.”
“Unfortunately, this was not the case. From the moment I started telling people I was expecting, the grumbles started. ‘You really should have told people you wanted to have a baby before you contested the preselection,’ one male member of the party said to me.” Hanson-Young said that a local Greens branch then went a step further, trying to have her preselection ruled invalid due to her pregnancy, claiming that members hadn’t been given all the relevant facts when they voted.
“Why on Earth would I reveal to a group of party members I may have skipped a period, or that I had a medical disorder that affected my fertility?” Hanson-Young asked today. “These are questions a male candidate would never have been asked and information he would never be expected to divulge.” She’s very right.