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Women rate Tony Abbott poorly on all fronts
The magnitude of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's "woman problem" has been underlined in new research which shows women rate the government very poorly across all policy areas and are harsher than men in their assessment of the government's overall performance.
Female voters are also more pessimistic about the economic outlook, according to the new polling analysis. By JWS Research, the analysis also shows women's satisfaction with their standard of living has declined much more precipitously than men's over the last year, a year the government has been under fire for failing to "get" women.
The findings are based on the views of 1004 Australians aged 18 and over. The views were collected as part of an online survey conducted from November 19 to 24. This week the prime minister highlighted his major achievement as women's minister as being the axing of the carbon tax, while a perceived lack of women in cabinet has been a source of criticism.
The findings, which come from a poll analysis broken down by gender, showed women believe the government is doing poorly on every single policy issue, as well as rating the government's net overall performance a full 13 points lower than men did. "The perception is it's essentially a male government focusing on male issues," said John Scales, JWS Research managing director.
In November 2013, 61 per cent of voters were satisfied with their standard of living, according to the JWS results, but in the intervening year, this has dropped 10 points to 51 per cent of people. Only 46 per cent of women feel satisfied with their standard of living, compared to a majority, 56 per cent, of men.
Women's net satisfaction with their standard of living is -12 per cent, whereas men's is -9 per cent. Women's pessimism bleeds into their feelings about the economic outlook. Men had an overall net positive view of the economy, whereas women had an overall net negative view.
Only 18 per cent of women think the economy is going in the "right direction", compared to 29 per cent of men, and 34 per cent of women thought the economy is going in the "wrong direction", compared to 32 per cent of men. The "gender performance gap" is most pronounced in immigration and border security: 40 per cent of men ranked the government's performance as good in this area, compared to only 26 per cent of women.
While 29 per cent of men rated as good the government's performance on "economy and finances", only 16 per cent of women did. And 17 per cent of men ranked as good the government's performance on community and social issues, but this dropped to 12 per cent for women. "It's not the same issue buckets for the two sexes," Scales said..
This leads to an overall significant gender performance gap for the government, although both sexes mark the government poorly. Thirty per cent of men thought the government's performance was good, compared to just 20 per cent, or one in five women. Nearly half - 45 per cent of women - rated the government's performance as poor, compared to 42 per cent of men.
The findings also gave the government some clues on how to win back the approbation of female voters, as they re-set the political agenda in the new year. The issues of "cost of living" and "housing affordability and interest rates" were of most importance to them. In the defence and security portfolio, they also rated as highly important Australia's military involvement in the Middle East.
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