FEMALE TROUBLE
How sexism nailed the Aussie PM
SO Kevin Rudd — the man they call “Heavy Kevvy” — has had his revenge. Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, has been removed in the same way she knifed Kevvy and installed herself in 2010. After months of leadership speculation, her disposal was achieved by the brutal deposition of her own caucus, only months from an election.
The justification for the leadership spill is Gillard’s ongoing poor performance in the opinion polls. With her primary vote down to as low as 29%, the nervousness of Gillard’s marginal-seat MPs has grown to an anxious din. In fact, the noise has been so loud that the Australian media has occupied itself with little else than the Labor Party’s inner warfare. It must, of course, be difficult to pay attention to policy reform when a constant stream of leaks and back-stabbing keeps the cellphone buzzing night and day.
To the outside world, Gillard’s unpopularity must be unfathomable. Ask readers of Australian tabloids and listeners to talkback radio why Gillard had to go and they will tell you she is incompetent — a bad leader of the “worst government ever”. Push them for detail, however, and her critics resort to little more than badly cribbed halftruths from the opposition Liberal Party’s talking points.
The reality is far different. After her rolling of Rudd, Gillard nudged to power in minority government after a disastrous election result for both Australia’s major parties in 2010. It was Gillard, not her opponent, the conservative Tony Abbott, who managed to win the support of what looked like an impossible coalition of four crossbenchers — a Green, an independent progressive and two independent conservatives.
Despite a minority government, her leadership and willingness to negotiate led to her passing a record amount of legislation for a post-war Australian prime minister. This included:
Introducing Australia’s first National Disability Insurance Scheme, of direct benefit to the 500 000 Australians living with disability;
Introducing carbon pricing and an emissions trading
Rhetoric and vitriol that even the caustic conversation of Australian politics would not allow of a male leader was unleashed with a rare bodily hatred
scheme that has reduced carbon emissions in Australia between 8% and 11%;
Overseeing the Gonski review for the revolutionary overhaul of the entire primary and secondary education sector;
Seeing that Australia takes up a seat on the UN security for the first time;
Instituting life-changing policies for improvements in indigenous literacy; and
Overseeing the creation of a national broadband network of high-speed internet as nationbuilding infrastructure.
Economically, her govern- ment maintained a commitment to Keynesian policy, unswayed by popular ayatollahs of faulty spreadsheet economics that have impoverished other developed nations. Australia was the only developed economy to survive the global financial crisis and under Gillard’s leadership the economy grew by 14%.
It must beggar belief in other developed nations to see a leader who has delivered low unemployment, low interest rates, low inflation, three triple-A credit ratings and the thirdlowest rate of debt in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shafted so brutally.
So what could it have been that made her so unpopular that her successes were ignored?
She had policy failings: the treatment of asylum seekers and the “intervention” in aboriginal communities remained Australia’s international human rights shame — but her policies were no worse than Rudd’s and certainly far less punitive than Abbott’s.
The problem for Gillard was not — as it had been with her predecessor Rudd — her performance. It was that, from beginning to end, she remained female.
From the outset, her detractors launched on her gender as a weakness — and it was.
The opposition never let the public forget her gender and the media crucified her. Rhetoric and vitriol that even the caustic conversation of Australian politics would not allow of a male leader was unleashed with a rare bodily hatred.
Opposition MPs reminded the public that the childless and unmarried Gillard was “deliberately barren”. The opposition leader and members of his shadow cabinet stood in front of protest signs describing her as a “bitch” and “witch”. Radio commentators suggested her beloved father “died of shame” and that she should be “dumped in a chaff bag and thrown out to sea” and asked, to her face, whether her partner was gay.
She was criticised after showing her cleavage in parliament and even feminist academic Germaine Greer appeared on television to say that Gillard’s “arse was fat”. She was scrutinised for what she wore, for her past lovers, and held up to ridicule for liking to knit. Opposition MPs appeared at dinners where her “small breasts, big thighs and red box” were literally on the menu.
The gendered attention was belittling — and that was its aim. Gillard the policy warrior was consistently rendered as an object of ridicule. She was the most powerful person in the nation, but not even she could stop the constant harassment. The belittling had an effect: despite her towering competence and leadership, children threw sandwiches at the prime minister when she visited a school.
Gillard’s famous misogyny speech echoed around the world because every word of it was spoken with the sincere, seething rage every belittled woman understands all too well. It was the rage of a woman who has fought hard and sacrificed much — only to see herself reduced by the bleating mockery of those who have never had to fight so hard for the same things. As the polls soured, Rudd — never as competent, never as nice, never as tough, never as capable — was waiting in the wings for the moment that the mere presence of his masculine body was enough to bolster their party’s fortunes.
The message sent to Australian women is a cruel one. The message is that achievement does not equal respect if you are a woman — that sexism does not become less as you ascend the slippery pole of power, but intensifies. That if you call out the misogyny for what it is — as Gillard did — you will be belittled again for using what your critics call “the gender card” and what every woman knows is the goddamn truth.
In the face of their first female prime minister’s vile treatment and viler end, one could forgive Australian women for rolling over and giving up
In the face of their first female prime minister’s vile treatment and viler end, one could forgive Australian women for rolling over and giving up.
I, however, am one of many who know that Australian women are made of tougher stuff, because I lived to see Gillard lead.
She may have been the first, but she will not be the last. We are not lying down to die. We are standing up to fight.
What does this mean for Australian women? It means to roll over — or fight. — © The Daily Telegraph, London