Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister (and, in terms of legislation passed per day of parliament, the most productive PM in Australia’s history which is something to remember next time some commentator bleats about the d-d-dangers of a minority government) has some regrets.
Specifically, she regrets assuming that people would not completely and utterly suck.
For a bit of background to this, she was giving a speech at King’s College in London last night as chair of the new Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. And after reflecting on the often brutal nature of Australian politics, regardless of the gender of the politicians involved, she admitted to there being something she badly underestimated: how unabashed people were going to be in their sexism.
“What I made a mistake about, was I thought that the maximum interest in the gender bit would be in the early days of when I was prime minister and then it would flatten out into a normal political cycle,” she explained.
“What I actually found was, yes, there was a reaction when I first became prime minister but then as the government continued to govern and things got tougher, actually it got more gendered, the gendered insults became the go-to weapon, and because you hadn’t said anything about it all this time to then suddenly say ‘oh this is the gendered bit’, people would say ‘well you’re only saying that because you’re in trouble’ and so it got harder to pull it out.”
And she’s not wrong. Even her Misogyny Speech, which is accurately cited as one of the defining moments of her tenure and made headlines all over the world, came far too late to save her or her government. She gave it in October 2012, and was deposed as leader and PM in June 2013 ahead of the election that put Tony Abbott in the PM’s chair. Although dear god, it’s still one of the most gloriously passionate events to ever happen in the lower house.
But can we pause here and reflect on what she’s saying about her regrets?
Our former Prime Minister is taking responsibility for not thinking Tony Abbott would stoop to using the death of her father as a way to insult her, or being castigated for remaining “deliberately barren” by Bill Heffernan, or being mocked for not needing a nanny by Sophie Mirabella, or Mal Brough referring to her “big red box” or having both ex-attorney general George Brandis and former Labor leader Mark Latham declaring that her lack of children shows a lack of empathy. Former Labor member Kate Ellis even recalled Rudd describing Gillard as “a childless, atheist ex-communist” – and while there was obviously no love lost there, that insult is plenty gendered.
And that’s before getting into the way the media enjoyed open and regular discussion of Gillard’s appearance and her weight and her voice and her dress sense and her housekeeping and whether her longtime partner Tim Mathieson was secretly gay and a thousand other gender-based insults which applied to zero prime ministers before her.
No-one slammed PM Ben Chifley for failing to sire children, or claimed that it meant he had no understanding of other people. No-one suggested Jeanette Howard was a lesbian because John was so physically unattractive. No-one made jokes about Gough Whitlam having a big arse, or talked about Fraser’s genitals – even when he forgot his pants in a hotel lobby.
From the forthcoming Malcolm Fraser biopic.
Gillard assumed that she would have to fight as the leader of the Labor party, a role to which she had come by controversial means, and that this rather than her gender would be the battleground. And even now, five years after leaving parliament, she feels that this was a failing of hers?
That someone as accomplished as Gillard would feel that she was somehow responsible for the depths to which her rivals and foes would sink is a perfect illustration of the zap that our culture – political and otherwise – puts on the heads of women. Rudd would never think himself responsible for what someone said about him. Latham barely takes responsibility for the things he says himself.
As the writer Sarah Hagi so eloquently put it…
DAILY PRAYER TO COMBAT IMPOSTOR SYNDROME: God give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude
— Sarah Hagi (@geekylonglegs) January 21, 2015
Julia Gillard made mistakes as PM, indubitably.
But trusting that her critics would have a shred of dignity, or treat her with a modicum of respect? That wasn’t one of them.