It’s no secret the Liberal Party of Australia has a problem with women. The party has made headlines over the years for its toxic blokey “Big Swinging Dick” culture, underrepresentation of women in the party, and dwindling support from women voters.

Yet it hasn’t always been this way. In its early years, the Liberals achieved most of the “firsts” for women in Australian politics and, for much of the 20th century, enjoyed more support from women than from men. So what changed?

In a new open-access study, I traced this transformation by exploring the influence of leaders on the party’s ideology and changing prioritisation of women’s issues.

Women played a crucial role in the founding of the Liberal Party in 1944. In creating a new party, Robert Menzies depended on the support of established conservative women’s organisations such as the Australian Women’s National League (AWNL).

As the largest conservative political organisation in Australia at the time, the AWNL brought an existing branch structure and volunteer base. Its chair, Elizabeth Couchman, came to the table with strong negotiating power and ensured structural equality for women at all levels of the party.

Though not labelled as such, these could be considered early examples of “gender quotas”.

As leader, Menzies was also central to the inclusion of women and their issues in the Liberal Party. Although a staunch traditionalist, he could see the changing times in postwar Australia and acknowledged women’s increasing roles in the workforce and politics.

While Labor remained a blokey party that mainly spoke to working-class male voters, the Liberals were the first party to specifically target women in the 1949 election campaign.

Through socially liberal policies such as........

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