Islands of Sanity, Sanctuary, and Solidarity
Women Politicians in Australia Recoding Power Through Relational Governance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47061/jasc.v6i1.13008Keywords:
relational governance, power in politics, ecosystem leadership, awareness-based systems transformationAbstract
Islands of coherence are recoding power for women in Australian Parliaments. We reflect on the emergent work and impact of Next25’s initiative, Improving Democracy: Transforming Parliament for Women, as an anarchive of how power can be recoded within formal institutions and resistant existing power dynamics to improve our democratic spaces for the participation and flourishing of all. A new form of relational governance has emerged from power being held with an open mind (new ways of seeing and knowing), open heart (new ways of being and relating) and open will (new ways of doing), which has created spaces of Sanity, Sanctuary, and Solidarity for women leaders in politics in Australia. This initiative was catalysed by a group of women parliamentarians from across the political spectrum in the New South Wales state parliament, Australia, and has since gone nationwide. Their vision was to disrupt the way that politics is enacted in Australia, as reflected in their lived experience, and evidenced by the prevalence of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct documented in the Broderick Report (Broderick & Co.,2022), and the structural inequities of power and representation identified in the Australian Human Rights Commission report (2021). Four years on, these islands of coherence demonstrate that power in politics need not be zero-sum. When women politicians collectively align their attention, intention and agency, as described by Scharmer and Kaufer (2025), a more generative form of relational governance becomes not only possible but resilient.
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