The moment she’s reflecting on, is becoming the first woman to breastfeed her child, while passing a motion before the Senate. It was one of 2017’s most iconic moments, but as the Co-Deputy leader of The Australian Greens tells whimn.com.au as part of their new Power Women profile series launched today, it was both remarkably significant and non-significant.

“From a mum’s perspective, breastfeeding is very normal and uneventful,” she says. “But symbolically, given that no one else had done it, it demonstrated that women belong in parliament, that we’re amazing multi-taskers, and with support, can juggle parenthood. In the moment, I didn’t think it would make such an impact. But I’m very proud a single act has encouraged other women.”

Since then, she’s had mothers stop her in the supermarket, and an influx of correspondence from women in other countries pushing for reform in their own parliaments.

But the battle for a more diverse political arena doesn’t begin and end with a white woman breastfeeding on the parliament floor, and Senator Waters recognises the system needs changing to encourage more women into politics.

While the mother-of-two acknowledges she’s speaking from a position of privilege, with strong family support, and a partner performing primary caretaking duties of their children, she also calls out the double standard, saying that no one would ever ask Prime Minister Scott Morrison how his kids are going to cope with him working.

“The culture of politics is very blokey, aggressive, egotistical, it’s very showy,” Senator Waters tells whimn.com.au. “It’s pretty gross really. Normal ordinary people look at it and think ‘why would I want to subject myself to that?’ Or, ‘there’s not many people like me in there.”

The Queensland Senator, whose portfolio includes women, climate and transparency in government, is critical of the underrepresentation of women in parliament, saying while the Greens don’t have quotas because they don’t need them (currently there are five female and five male Federal MPs in the party), the low levels of women in other parties make them necessary.

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” she says. “Unless we can show politics can be a viable option for young women you’ll never fix it. It’s a vicious circle.”

If lack of quotas are one challenge for female candidates, another is the sexist focus on agreeability.

Asked what she thought about ‘likeability’ being used to gauge a female politician (Hillary Clinton was famously written off as unlikeable in her campaign that saw Trump elected) Senator Waters was frank.

“I really struggle with it,” she says. “I don’t think we should have to be likeable to be effective. The most important thing is authenticity regardless of gender.”

The Senator used ScoMo as an example, “He’s trying to appear likeable but everyone thinks he’s a bozo. It’s not working. Australians want their PM to be prime ministerial, and everyone else to be hardworking.”

The take-down comes just weeks after the Senator called the Morrison government out for the being too busy to meet with the office for women.

Following the $78m family allowance package pledged by the PM, Senator Waters used a meeting of the Senate Finance And Public Administration Legislation Committee to ask members for the Office For Women about the amount of times they’d met with the Prime Minister. She was incredulous when she discovered the answer was zero.

“So, given we have an epidemic of violence against women … is that something — would you be seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister or is that something you would wait for the Prime Minister to initiate?” Senator Waters asked in the video posted to her Instagram account.

Their response — that while they had a “working relationship” with the Prime Minister’s office, he hadn’t sought out a meeting — clearly irritated the senator.

“It’s staggering the PM wouldn’t seek to meet with an office that is meant to advise him on keeping women safe from violence when women are actually dying at a greater rate than one a week,” Senator Waters later tells whimn.com.au.

“It’s hardly surprising given it took the PM nearly six months before he even mentioned domestic violence and the shocking rate women are dying at the hands of men.

“When he did, he announced a paltry amount of funding that shows he still doesn’t understand the seriousness of the issue and still hasn’t realised that the real terror threat and national security crisis is against women in their homes.”

Senator Waters stood down from parliament as a casualty of section 44 when she discovered she was still a dual Canadian citizen. At the time her second child, was five months old, her partner went back to work.

The returned Senator says time away from Canberra experiencing the everyday stresses of an ordinary non-politician made her “realise just how disenfranchised voters feel about Australia’s democratic institutions”.

The Power Women series by whimn.com.au celebrates the brightest names of the future on their paths to power. Read Senator Larissa Water’s full profile here