Annabel Crabb & Steph Tisdell lift the lid on women in politics in Ms Represented podcast

The ABC is offering up a “raw and honest” account of politics from the female perspective via the cross-platform Ms Represented.

Ms Represented coincides with the 100th anniversary of the election of Australia’s first female parliamentarian Edith Cowan, and will be both an ABC TV series and a podcast.

The podcast will be hosted by commentator and author Annabel Crabb, alongside comedian Steph Tisdell.

In the podcast, the duo will endeavour to “lift the lid on the untold stories of women in Australian politics”.  It will feature interviews with personalities including Cheryl Kernot, Kate Sullivan, Anne Aly and Penny Wong.

“The series will steer from the shocking to the inspirational, using humour to help Australians to engage with a part of our history that deserves more attention,” publicity from the ABC said.

The podcast is from by the ABC’s audio news and current affairs unit, and is produced and mixed by Madeleine Genner. All six episodes will be released on Tuesday, 13 July, the same day the four-part TV series premieres on ABC TV.

The TV series is structured around themes, rather than chronology, the ABC said, with Crabb noting none of this is “ancient history”.

“Australia was the first independent nation in the world where women could both vote and run for Parliament. But it took us a long time to actually elect any women, and when we did, we expected them to fit into the system that was already there. The struggle of female parliamentarians to be heard, to be respected, and to prosper in our Federal Parliament is a thrilling and inspiring one, full of extraordinary stories that our cast tell with grace, humour and the deep authority of experience,” she said.

“Many women who are ‘firsts’ in politics are still actually in Parliament. The first Indigenous woman in the House of Representatives was born into a country where her father’s people still could not enrol to vote. The story of women in Parliament is a living, changing thing. In Ms Represented, we’ve captured a draft of it.”

In recent weeks, 10 News First Person also launched a podcast about female politicians, Women Of The House. In the series, political reporter Stela Todorovic sits down with a number of prominent female politicians, discussing their career experiences as women to gain an insight into the workplace culture at Parliament House.