Dear Hasbeen,

I like your sense of humour!

Seriously though, we all have issues that
are important to us, at least that's my
reasoning in the way we choose who to vote for.

Foxy

The attitude expressed by your quote is disgusting.

"We live in times when women are constantly given advice on how to live and what to aspire to, to safeguard their precious gift of virginity, to put children before completing their PhDs, to lower their standards, to stay skinny, cook, clean,and do as men say..."

As we all go through life, we all receive criticism, unsolicited advice, nasty comments and all manner of other comments on our behaviour from other people. If we never listened to any of this, society would fall apart. It is only women, who are told that this is controlling. Why should women be 'protected' from this? Do some people think that women have such fragile little egos that they need to be 'protected' from any and all criticism?

Thanks for the responses, folks.

Allowing for the digressions, the consensus among the women who responded seems to be that they believe they vote the way they do for good, rational reasons that are unrelated to their gender other than peripherally.

I'm very glad and not at all surprised to hear that. I'm sure that almost all women would respond similarly if asked.

Pelican said "both sides of politics are equal in ensuring women do not face discrimination", which begs the question: what if they weren't? What if the perception could be created that they weren't?

Would women still vote on other issues, or would a goodly proportion vote against the party that was perceived as "anti-women" even if the proposed policies would have no impact personally. Perhaps you're post-menopausal and a party has an anti-abortion policy, for example. Does it influence your vote?

The final part of my initial post asked if all those "women's advocacy" groups are worth the money that government pays them. A major reason to fund them is their claim to represent women in matters political, yet if women are truly as independent of thought as has been claimed here, then they cannot possibly do so, surely?

Is the Office for Women a waste of time if women are so heterogenous? How can it possibly be all things to all women and hence, how can it fail to discriminate?

Suzeonline:"are you suggesting that men don't care about issues that affect their family and the women in their lives? "

No, of course not. I'm suggesting that men are less likely to think much of specifically "family friendly" policies unless they put more money in the bank and they're much less likely to prioritise such policies

Dear benk,

Thank You for being so open and honest
in your feelings about the quote I cited.
(Don't hold back, tell us what you really think).

However, my point was that there are many issues
that may concern some women - and these are
issues that may influence the way they vote.

I wasn't attempting to speak for all women by
any means, and I thought that I'd made that
clear in my post when I said that we're all
(men and women) multi-faceted individuals
and that we shouldn't be lumped together
because we vote as individuals.
Perhaps you should re-read the post?

And perhaps you should examine the chip on
your shoulder - heaven forbid should you lose it!

pelican, equal rights legislation is reconciled in the women's and the men's jurisdictions of ALL courts.
Australian law already considers "a person's sexual identity [is] determined by their ''brain sex'', not their genitalia".
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/court-gave-teen-the-right-to-change-gender-from-boy-to-girl-20100305-popg.html
the aptly titled doctrine of 'mens rea' determines that if there are women's and men's minds, at law there are women's and men's jurisdictions.
the efficiency dividend once the indecision of what might be on the mind of the opposite sex is removed, sourced from the vote sent through parliament and secured in the courts, can be measured in squillions.

the parliament of an equal rights republic, elected from the women's vote for female candidates to a women's legislature and the men's vote for male candidates to a men's legislature, enacts law when the legislatures reach agreement on the same issue, exactly the same as the federal parliament now only gendered.
criminal sentences are negotiated exactly the same as they are now, only with the collective agreement of women and men interpreted in courts of women's and men's jurisdiction.

if the law is even-handed on the basis of gender, it's even-handed on the basis of every demographic comprising
gender including age, race and religion.