More than 20 years ago, artist Carol Porter got people’s attention with an image of the 50-foot woman standing over Australia’s Parliament House and the words “don’t get mad, get elected”.
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That image was released in 1997, after John Howard was first elected as prime minister, and brought out again by Cathy McGowan this week.
The Indi MP and fellow independent Rebekha Sharkie walked into the House of Representatives with a copy of the poster on Wednesday.
They also paraded past the visiting delegation from Saudi Arabia which was in Parliament for question time.
Ms McGowan has a framed copy of the poster in her office and asked the Victorian Women's Trust to make copies for others who were interested.
“There’s been so much discussion about women in Parliament and I wanted to point out that there’s two of us on the crossbench who got elected by our communities,” she said.
But she did get into a little bit of trouble during question time when Speaker Tony Smith warned her “the member for Indi knows the rules on props”.
MPs are not allowed to display signage in the House.
The poster was originally produced with the assistance of a grant from the Victorian Women's Trust, which stated the image of a 50-foot woman enraged by a male-dominated Parliament aimed to encourage women to stand for election rather than feel enraged or frustrated.
"It was tapping into the fact that women should get into power and make a difference," Ms Porter has told Fairfax Media.
The lack of female representation in Parliament has been back on the agenda in recent weeks following bullying allegations made by female Liberal MPs.
Ms McGowan is yet to confirm if she will try to get elected for another term.
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