Gillian Triggs: 'difficult year for women'
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It's going to be an "uphill battle" for women's rights now in the United States, one Australian female business leader has predicted following the election of Donald Trump as president and the repudiation of the nation's first woman candidate for the White House.
Prominent women agree that it wasn't that America wasn't ready for a female president but the electoral cycle and other policy issues that played a big part in the upset result.
Prominent businesswoman and founding chair of the Women's Leadership Institute Australia Carol Schwartz said Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton was "absolutely, undoubtedly, the most experienced person to take on the role of President of the United States of America".
"What were people thinking?" Ms Schwartz asked.
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"I followed the comments throughout the campaign around sexism closely and I think there was an enormous amount of analysis, commentary, conversation and debate around sexism," she said.
"It was a little like what Julia Gillard was dealing with, especially when it was during the Clinton versus Sanders days."
Ms Schwartz said she would hate to think Americans were not ready for a female president.
"I think the issues involving Hillary not sweeping into victory were complex and more about trends in American politics."
Role of women
![Heat Group chief executive Gillian Franklin says there was a lot of noise about sexism in the election campaign but it ...](/content/dam/images/g/s/m/i/w/h/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1478784830432.jpg)
Ms Schwartz said it was going to be "an uphill battle" for women's rights and push to be equal in leadership positions in the US now.
"Trump has expressed his views clearly about the role of women in society," she said.
"It's very sad and potentially negative for US women. Hopefully this will not impact women in leadership roles globally."
Data from CNN's Edison national election poll, based on a sample of 24,537 respondents at 350 polling stations, showed that 53 per cent of white women voted for Mr Trump and 43 per cent for Mrs Clinton. Among non-college-educated whites, 67 per cent voted for Mr Trump, 62 per cent of these were women.
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Australian Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins declined to comment, as did former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who tweeted: "Thanks @HillaryClinton for your courage. I'm still with her and her vision of inspiring girls by shattering that high, hard glass ceiling-JG".
Thanks @HillaryClinton for your courage.I'm still with her and her vision of inspiring girls by shattering that high, hard glass ceiling-JG
— Julia Gillard (@JuliaGillard) November 9, 2016
Heat Group chief executive Gillian Franklin said there was a lot of noise about sexism in the election campaign but it wasn't the issue that people voted on.
"At the end the day they voted on anti-establishment not anti-women," she said.
"Trump's cornerstone policy to make American great again was that he promised jobs. The uneducated white males wanted jobs."
Ms Franklin said President-elect Trump was a "different person" in his presidential acceptance speech and she does not think his appointment will damage women's ascent to leadership positions: "Business will continue."
Former chief executive of Jones Lang LaSalle Australia and board director Christine Bartlett said being a female candidate would have influenced some Americans' vote but the election result was far more complicated than just being about gender.
"We have fantastic female role models in Angela Merkel and Theresa May," Ms Bartlett said.
"I think it was much more about values, role models, experience and what the candidates stood for. I am personally very disappointed at the result and I think it is a message to all of us on making sure our own voices are heard and that we don't take democracy for granted."
'Bigotry and racism'
Melbourne University Publishing chief executive Louise Adler said millions of Americans have now entrusted their future to a "man devoid of political or policy experience, a track record of groping women, of tax avoidance, of bigotry and racism, of such crudity and breathtaking ignorance one fears for the world".
"Many years ago that great female comic Lily Tomlin observed 'the trouble with the rat race is that even if a woman wins, she is still a rat', and that was Team Trump's message throughout this election campaign. Hillary Clinton, or 'she' as Trump so rudely referred to her, was relentlessly vilified."
Ms Adler said Mrs Clinton's failure to prevail at the ballot box could not be attributed only to entrenched misogyny but it was implicit in the spin her opponent employed.
"Michelle Obama said 'when they go low, we go high', her husband rendered himself hoarse urging the voters 'to choose hope'," Ms Adler said.
"Both were appeals to the citizenry's better self. What a tragedy their words went unheeded."