This book shows how the #MeToo movement and revelations of sexual harassment and bullying in the parliamentary workplace have provided momentum for reform in four Westminster countries—Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. These parliaments were characterised by extreme power imbalances between parliamentarians and staff and a lack of professionalised employment practices. Codes of conduct and independent complaints bodies were resisted on grounds of parliamentary privilege: the ballot box was supposedly the best means of holding parliamentarians accountable for their conduct. The taken-for-granted
status of adversarialism as the fulcrum of politics also rendered gendered mistreatment invisible.

We examine the different trajectories of reform in the four countries, but with most detail on the dramatic developments in Australia after angry women marched on parliament houses in 2021. At the theoretical level, the book illustrates the role of gendered logics of appropriateness in sustaining institutional practices and of critical junctures in enabling institu-
tional change. While charting positive developments in the four countries, it reveals issues of ‘nested newness’ where new approaches to misconduct succumb to old partisan logics. (About ths book). Record #8634