“Women’s” issues are once again playing a significant role in the election debate as Labor and the Liberals trade barbs over which parties’ policies will benefit women most. In the latest salvo, the opposition has announced a $90 million package to combat family and domestic violence.

However, perversely, the Liberals’ women’s policy may be being constrained by their very concept of equality. That conception worked very effectively in the Coalition’s successful populist campaign against the Voice referendum. Peter Dutton and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price argued true equality involved treating everyone the same. They therefore claimed the Voice referendum was divisive and would give Indigenous Australians additional rights denied to non-Indigenous Australians.

In Dutton’s view, “egalitarianism” involves “pushing back on identity politics”. This in turn means emphasising people as individuals rather than as members of social groups.

However, that conception of equality is arguably compounding the Liberals’ “women problem”. It helps to explain the debacle of the Liberals’ original opposition to public servants working from home (WFH) and their subsequent humiliating policy backdown.

Director of Redbridge polling, Kos Samaras, argued the WFH policy was particularly unpopular with women, and had helped drive many women previously alienated by cost of living pressures back to Labor.

Dutton admitted the Coalition had got the policy wrong after “listening to what people have to say”. Anthony Albanese quickly accused the opposition leader of not understanding how women and men in modern families manage their lives. Labor also suggested Dutton couldn’t be trusted not to reintroduce his WFH policies if elected.

Astonishingly, Shadow Minister for the Public Service Jane Hume

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