In a large part, Radmila Noveska’s three daughters are what drove her personally to run for council.
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As a young professional woman, and a mother of three, Ms Noveska stepped up to run because she thought she would bring a useful perspective to the table.
But she also wanted her daughters to see that women could be leaders in the community.
“I want them to grow up and have strong female role models,” she said.
“You’re just as entitled to be at the table as the men around you.”
Cr Noveska is one of just two women on the 11 strong Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council.
Across NSW 29.5 percent of elected councillors are currently women, according to Local Government NSW.
That’s just under one in three.
And at times, Cr Noveska feels this in patronising or outdated attitudes from fellow councillors.
Often it’s little things that show these up. She recalls one instance in December.
She was leading a motion when the meeting chair asked her if she would like to sum up her case, or if she’d prefer her fellow Country Labour councillor, a man, to do so.
Having few women on council sends a message that it’s not the place for women, Cr Noveska says.
Instead, it’s often women out there doing the hard yards to keep a community going day to day, which Cr Noveska sees as the perfect grounding for work as a councillor.
Women often don’t run for council because they’re less confident to put themselves foward, says Cr Noveska. She’d like to see more thought put into encouraging women to step up to run, and more women running in winnable spots on tickets.
“We only have two [women] out of 11 [councillors]…it sends a signal to the community that it’s not fit for women, but in actual fact it’s a perfect fit for women,” she said.
When she was first on council, Trudy Taylor was working full time.
And despite not yet having children, her house was always a mess.
Now, she is lucky enough to work part time, but having two children aged 3 and 4 makes it no easier.
To her it seems that the disproportionate amount of household labour women do – in 2016 women were twice as likely to do more than 15 hours of unpaid domestic work as men according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics – directly affects how much spare time they have to do the hard yards associated with being a councillor.
“Generally and traditionally women are the parent who are responsible for want of a better word, housekeeping,” Cr Taylor said.
“As much as we as women have worked really hard to break that, I think it’s still pretty prevalent in most Australian households.”
A few simple steps could however make it easier for women to participate in council, she says.
She recently discovered she can claim childcare as an expense, which has made attending council meetings much easier when her husband has to work.
Likewise, she thinks if remuneration was increased slightly, more women would be able to treat the role of councillor as a part time job.
Of QPRC’s staff, women comprised 36.5 percent in 2016-2017.
Currently, 25 percent of portfolio general managers are women, 29 percent of service managers, 33 percent of coordinators and 22 percent of team leaders.