The event’s lineup was formidable and the audience at the 2021 Sydney writers’ festival was expectant: Cathy McGowan, Annabel Crabb, Kate Ellis and Mehreen Faruqi in a discussion on “women in politics” chaired by Clare Wright. It was a lively session, if also depressing, traversing the discrimination Faruqi and Ellis faced from opponents in the parliament, and in Kate’s case, from within her own party.
Faruqi described how difficult she found it to even enter Parliament House since it had been revealed as a house of harassment, bullying and assault. She told the audience that, despite her previous career in the highly masculine profession of engineering, she had “never felt more marginalised and sidelined” than as a politician. For Faruqi, as a migrant brown woman, the parliament was a “very lonely place”.
