One hundred years after Australia elected its very first female parliamentarian, Annabel Crabb presents MS REPRESENTED, a raw and honest account of politics from the female perspective.
The four-part series will premiere on Tuesday 13 July at 8pm on ABC TV, with all episodes available to binge on ABC iview. Accompanying the series is a companion podcast hosted by Annabel and comedian Steph Tisdell, with all six episodes available in the ABC listen app on Tuesday 13 July.
Ms Represented TV Series:
Powered by intense interviews with an unprecedented cast of female “firsts”, Crabb investigates the experience of women in Parliament, from early struggles for the most basic of facilities to the persistent problems of harassment that plague the system to this day.
Annabel said:
“Australia was the first independent nation in the world where women could both vote and run for Parliament.”
“But it took us a long time to actually elect any women, and when we did, we expected them to fit into the system that was already there. The struggle of female parliamentarians to be heard, to be respected, and to prosper in our federal Parliament is a thrilling and inspiring one, full of extraordinary stories that our cast tell with grace, humour and the deep authority of experience.”
“This is not ancient history. Many women who are “firsts” in politics are still actually in parliament. The first Indigenous woman in the House of Representatives was born into a country where her father’s people still could not enrol to vote. The story of women in parliament is a living, changing thing. In Ms Represented, we’ve captured a draft of it.”
Structured around themes rather than chronology, Ms Represented ranges across four episodes visiting key events, like the 1894 South Australian parliamentary vote in which a strategic blunder gave SA women not only the right to vote, but the right to stand for parliament too – a world first. Or the secret deal cut by male legislators in 1996 that barred women from accessing the abortion drug RU486 for nearly a decade, before it was undone by an unprecedented cross-party grouping of women. Or the tense battle behind the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984.
We hear the stories: the women who were told by party officials to change their names, or stop wearing short skirts. The candidate who faked up a campaign cookbook so as to seem more “womanly”. The woman who – desperate for campaign childcare – engaged Germaine Greer as a babysitter. The women who stood up against their own parties. The women who endured drunken gropes and abuse even within the walls of the parliament. The women who were elected to the parliament and found that there weren’t toilets for them to use.
But the heart of the series is the women themselves. Proud, angry, determined, sad, hilarious; they speak about their lives in politics with rare candour.
Ms Represented is an ABC Production.
Series Creator & Writer: Annabel Crabb, Director/Producer: Stamatia Maroupas, Producer: Geraldine McKenna, Executive Producer: Frances O’Riordan, Head of Entertainment: Nick Hayden, Head of Drama, Entertainment & Indigenous: Sally Riley.
Ms Represented Podcast:
In this podcast, Annabel Crabb and comedian Steph Tisdell lift the lid on the untold stories of women in Australian politics, just in time for the centenary of Edith Cowan’s historic election in 1921. With access to a wealth of interviews with trailblazers like Cheryl Kernot and Kate Sullivan to current figures like Anne Aly and Penny Wong, this series will steer from the shocking to the inspirational, using humour to help Australians to engage with a part of our history that deserves more attention.
You can find all six episodes of this accompanying podcast on the ABC listen app, or wherever you hear podcasts, from the evening of Tuesday July 13.
Ms Represented is a podcast production of the ABC’s Audio News and Current Affairs unit. Produced and mixed by Madeleine Genner.
Please let me know all of the dates when it will appear on the ABC. I and mot a Binge watcher! The show was terrific but I will be amazed if the ABC doesn’t put this on each week. I can’t believe that Annabell’s talents would be wasted on a just a podcast or some ‘binge’ watching on iView.
PLEASE DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN. ALL OF MY FRIENDS AGREE. WE ARE OF THE OLDER GENERATION BUT THAT INCLUDES AT LEAST ON 38 YEAR OLD, SEVERAL 40 YEAR OLD (AT LEAST 2 MEN) AND A LARGE NUMBER OF 50, 60 AND 70 YEAR OLDS. I HAPPEN TO BE 80 BUT A COMMITTED ABC VIEW WHO IS EXTREMELY INTERESTED IN POLITICS.
Please note I do not want my name published. Nothing I’ve said is untrue but I don’t want lots of phone calls from people who will recognise themselves on my post. There are too many there who will want to know the names of others and I don’t have the energy to to contact each of the people to ask his or her permission to pass on that information!
JK
Hi Jacqueline – it is on Tuesday nights 8pm for the next 3 weeks, or all eps on ABC iview.