by Julia Baird
For that thesis, I had examined the media files of every single female Australian MP from the 1940s onwards, eventually focusing on the decades after 1970. This involved spending years researching in state and territory parliamentary libraries — including Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney — burrowing into yellowing clippings files and whirring through dizzying microfilm spools. I spent most of my time, though, in the federal parliamentary library in Canberra, wrestling with mammoth files devoted to the major players, the likes of Carmen Lawrence, Ros Kelly and Amanda Vanstone.
When not in a library, I was interviewing more than one hundred current, former and aspiring female politicians who generously gave me hours of their time to reflect on their experiences, even though, as one said to me, a political career can feel much like you’re ‘thrown in the washing machine on the day you’re elected, and you only stop spinning on the day you leave’.
What I wanted to know was how the press refracted the experiences of female MPs back to the public, how reporters and photographers depicted women entering a world made up almost entirely of men, and if there were any repetitive patterns or stereotypes that impacted the careers of those women.
What I found was decades of evidence showing how odd, and unnatural, we considered the pairing of women with power and authority to be. There were several dominant frames, or tropes. Women were diminished as ‘Grandma MPs’. They were asked who would do the dishes or mind the kids if they won a seat (the Housewife Superstars). They were drooled over if young and considered conventionally attractive, then quickly dismissed as shallow and ungrateful if they complained (the Cover Girls). They were described as peculiarities, a combination of metal and velvet, who were considered very surprising if successful and cast as unbending ‘iron lady’ autocrats if decisive (the Steel Sheilas). They were asked constantly about being women, were declared to be acceptable feminists if they appeared to also groom, and yet often asked about little else (the Feminine Feminists). Then, by the 1990s, they were canonised then crucified (the Sinning Saints). While their male colleagues were seen as individuals, women were viewed as part of a group.
These frames showed the persistence of the idea that politics is a man’s game that women could only dabble in, often at their peril. It matters because it means women are then promoted less frequently, ousted more readily and ignored much more easily. It also means they are depicted as interlopers and imposters, and urged not to change a culture but conform to it.
It’s important to remember, too, that there was a significant emotional toll in many of these stories. Some women were destroyed by this cycle of adulation then hate, overwhelming even before the onset of social media; some had breakdowns and hospitalisations, ongoing struggles with mental health, and were forced to leave politics and never return — all as a nation watched and women still remaining in political parties took note. In the 1990s and 2000s, the lessons were: keep your head down, don’t attract too much attention, shave the edges off your personality, fit in a box and stay there. Don’t, in other words, upset the status quo. Don’t disrupt. Women were punished for any overt signs of flair or glamour, while their male colleagues were just considered rakish and charismatic.
Let’s not forget, for example: former Democrat leader Cheryl Kernot was slut-shamed nationally for months for wearing a pretty red dress and a feather boa on the cover of the Australian Women’s Weekly. Jeff Kennett, who posed with models draped around his legs and shoulders when he was the premier of Victoria, with his hand patting the head of one woman on the floor much as one might a toddler or a dog, was simply called a ‘Model Premier’. (The portrait is currently part of the National Portrait Gallery).
As I outline in this book, Cheryl Kernot was also slut-shamed for years after being exposed by a gallery veteran for having had an affair with a Labor colleague, Gareth Evans. She left the country for several years. Evans meanwhile carried on unscathed, serving on influential international commissions and being appointed chancellor of the Australian National University.
By ‘slut-shamed’, for those who wince or puzzle at the term, I mean having one’s character or morals impugned by the suggestion of being sexually active. Which, of course, does not happen to men. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as: ‘to talk about a woman’s sexual behaviour in order to embarrass her and make people disapprove of her’. Interestingly, the first example they give is: ‘Her political career was brought to an end by gutter journalism that slut-shamed her.’ It’s now a well-established pattern — the examples are legion.
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I called this book Media Tarts because the media was so obviously conscious of their role in the rise and demise of female politicians, well aware that they could create then deflate public reputations with ease. All politicians are media tarts — dependent on good coverage for visibility and electability — but only the women were derided for having sustained favourable coverage. And there was a creepy kind of subtext in much reportage that implied that the sexual appeal of women in the public eye was inexorably linked with their political fortunes, as it was assumed to be for women in so many arenas. That, in an instant, they could be praised then shamed for being female, or feminine, or flawed. Tarts, even.
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After the book’s initial publication, it seemed like things were getting better, that inching progress was being made. Then overnight, suddenly and shockingly, a woman became prime minister. Julia Gillard successfully toppled Kevin Rudd in 2010, saying the government had lost its way, and it seemed, briefly, as if this could be the tipping point for women, the moment at which it could become normal to see a woman wielding real power.
But despite the fact that Gillard was widely popular as a deputy leader and respected as a sharp and pragmatic operator, the moment she placed her hands on the nation’s helm, the souring began. By the end of her tenure, we had witnessed a kind of mass misogynistic hysteria that was unprecedented in its volume and vitriol. For the three years and three days that Julia Gillard was prime minister of Australia, we debated the fit of her jackets, the size of her bottom, the exposure of her cleavage, the cut of her hair, the tone of her voice, the legitimacy of her rule and whether she had chosen, as Liberal senator Bill Heffernan put it, to be ‘deliberately barren’. (Anyone who would do that deliberately, he said, has ‘got no idea what life’s about’.)
When was the last time you heard a man called barren?
The fact that Julia Gillard had no children and had not married her partner somehow opened her up to abuse. The CEO of Australian Agricultural Company, David Farley, called her a ‘non-productive old cow’ and Liberal opposition leader Tony Abbott suggested she should ‘make an honest woman of herself’.
The sexism was visceral and often grotesque.
There were placards crying ‘Ditch the Witch’, toys designed for dogs that encouraged them to chew on the fleshier parts of her anatomy, and a menu offering ‘Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail — small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box.’ By the end of her term, on 27 June 2013, the disrespect was so pervasive that the prime minister struggled to be heard above the sexist ridicule. Violent threats became commonplace. In Brisbane, she drove past a man who pointed at her, making a sign of a noose.1
When Gillard spoke about some of these slurs, she was accused of igniting ‘gender wars.’ When female colleagues came to her defence, they were tagged the ‘handbag hit squad’ by their Liberal opponents. Any discussion of the misogyny that was marbling public debate was dismissed as ‘the gender card’.
Gillard was not flawless — that was not the issue. Much of her problem arose from the way she acquired power. When she deposed Rudd, it was the first time that a sitting prime minister in Australia had been overthrown by his own party during his first term. Three years later, of course, Rudd returned the favour, after polls suggested that the party would be annihilated at the coming election.
Uneasiness over the way Gillard came to power fed deep currents of sexism throughout
her time as prime minister. Yet in political scientist Blair Williams’s analysis of the prime ministerial ascension of both Malcolm Turnbull — who successfully challenged sitting prime minister Tony Abbott in September 2015 — and Julia Gillard, she found that while Gillard was depicted as a ‘backstabbing murderer’, Turnbull was seen to be ‘taking back the reins’.2 Positive terms spotted the coverage of Turnbull: ‘rejuvenate’, ‘innovation’, ‘exciting’, ‘welcomed’, ‘triumph’. His win over Abbott was a ‘spectacular reprise’ and he was described as ‘seizing the PM’s job . . . in a sudden and extraordinary ballot’. Whereas of the 380 articles Williams analysed about Gillard’s successful challenge, almost half portrayed Gillard as a Lady Macbeth: she was depicted in the coverage as ‘a murderer thirsty for Rudd’s blood, employing words such as “knifing”, “decapitation”, “ruthless assassination” and “execute”.’ Gillard was disloyal; Turnbull was successful and ambitious.3
The polls were favourable, though — in her first week as PM her party’s two-party preferred vote rose by 14 per cent, and leader satisfaction by 38 per cent — and Gillard quickly called an election for August 2010. The results were close and she was only able to form a minority government by negotiating deals with the Greens and three independents. The Greens wanted a price on carbon and Gillard agreed, even though she had said during the campaign that there would be ‘no carbon tax under a government that I lead’. (Incidentally, the price on carbon saw a drop in emissions in those companies subject to it: it worked.)
Tony Abbott, who was prime minister from 2013 to 2015, spent years branding Gillard as a liar because of her move on the carbon price, with some effect. He promised repeatedly during the 2013 election campaign to lead a government that ‘says what it means, and does what it says’. But analysis by the Australian Financial Review found that in his first year of office, Abbott had broken his word on 14 pre-election promises, including ‘no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, and no cuts to the ABC or SBS’. The headline read: ‘Abbott government breaks more promises than it keeps’.4
It’s not hypocrisy that is the most problematic finding here, but the idea that men are expected to do politics this way — to lie, backflip, play dirty, abuse opponents, topple leaders. But when a woman was forced to break a promise because she did a deal that would allow her to form minority government, she became ‘JULIAR’ and was unable to shake the tag. A common descriptor was ‘the lying bitch’.
As leader, Gillard struggled to project her natural warmth, humour and empathy or convince the public of her sincerity. She was slow to condemn corruption in her party, opposed marriage equality, passed welfare reforms that disproportionately disadvantaged single mothers, and negotiated a limp tax that failed to reap significant revenue from Australia’s mining boom. But she was pragmatic and effective, presided over solid economic growth, called a royal commission into institutional child abuse, and enacted historic reforms in the areas of education, paid parental leave and disability.
Women across Australia had clinked glasses at her ascension: at last, the mould was smashed. She was an unmarried red-haired atheist with no children, living with a hairdresser boyfriend who often rose early to tend to her tresses. Gillard had fought the 2010 election hard, ignoring the sneers, the contempt and the catcalls.
Then, in 2012, her father died. While she was still grieving, a radio shock jock named Alan Jones — who had previously said Gillard should be put in a chaff bag and dumped out at sea — declared that Gillard’s father died of shame. Shortly afterward, in Parliament, Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal opposition, said that Gillard’s government should ‘die of shame’.
And Gillard, spectacularly, stood up and delivered a blistering response, a speech of such force and conviction that it ricocheted around the globe. She said:
The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror.
She would not be lectured to, she said, by a man who had stood next to placards calling her ‘bitch’ and who had suggested that men had a better temperament for leadership (asking an interviewer: ‘what if men are by physiology or temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?’).
‘My father did not die of shame,’ she said coolly. ‘What the leader of the opposition should be ashamed of is his performance in this Parliament and the sexism he brings with it.’
Many still remember where they were when they heard this speech; I was at home, writing, and was suddenly charged with electricity. I hopped from foot to foot, calling my newspaper editor to see if she wanted me to file a piece on it, and when she asked me to wait until Saturday, I laced up my sneakers and dashed out the door for a run, trying to find a way to burn up the energy. When I saw the papers the next day, I was staggered — I flipped pages, looking for someone who got it, who saw how momentous that speech had been and would remain. But, with one rare exception of a small piece by Jacqueline Maley, the press gallery, distracted by the daily politicking, missed it, astonishingly.
While this speech was globally lauded, the irony was, as Gillard’s popularity dropped — especially among men — her failings were pegged to the fact that she had dared to talk about the perils of female leadership. With gender dominating front pages for months, the media described her daily as a failed experiment. Even her fiercest critics conceded in the final weeks of her leadership, that no other prime minister was ever treated with such vitriol. Radio host Ray Hadley, who had called her an ‘imbecile’ and a ‘vitriolic, bitter, condescending, arrogant facade of a prime minister’ said, apparently without irony: ‘I don’t think there’s been any prime minister who has been subject to the sort of attacks Julia Gillard has received.’
At her last news conference as PM, Gillard said being the first woman to hold the office ‘does not explain everything about my time in the prime ministership, nor does it explain nothing’. Her voice quavered when she said, ‘What I am absolutely confident of is that it will be easier for the next woman and for the woman after that and the woman after that, and I’m proud of that.’
Gillard had suffered the most extraordinary foul attacks on a woman we have seen in this country. Both her success and her failure acted like pipe songs, luring the snakes of contempt and woman-hating from their baskets. Disrespect was rife. School students threw sandwiches at her. And all of the ancient tropes had roared back into life — the focus on her lack of children and an empty fruit bowl in her kitchen (Housewife Superstars), on her appearance (Cover Girls), the horror that she compromised on a promise, which is pretty standard political behaviour (Steel Sheilas), the view of her successful leadership challenge as sinister (Steel Sheilas) and murderous (Sinning Saints), and the punishment for talking about bias against women (Feminine Feminists). All of them dormant, then revived.
It would be difficult to underestimate the impact this public vivisection of a powerful woman had on women in Australia, especially young women. A 2017 Plan International survey of more than 2000 Australian girls and young women aged between ten and 25 found that precisely zero per cent of women aged 18 to 25 wanted to go into politics. Not one. They had been paying attention. As had other women, who as they went about their daily lives, working and caring and parenting and striving, remembered the contempt, the scorn and the ugliness ladled out upon the head of our first female prime minister and wondered what had happened and why things became so frenzied and so irrational once a woman was finally in charge.
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In her recent book, Sex, Lies and Question Time, former federal Labor minister Kate Ellis describes the guilt she and some of her female colleagues felt — and still feel — about the treatment of our first female prime minister. Could
they have better protected Julia Gillard when she was being disrespected and savaged daily? Ellis writes: ‘if we had been more forthright in calling the culture out earlier, would the appalling misogynistic attacks on Julia Gillard still have occurred? Could we have stopped things before they exploded so dramatically?’5
Deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek believes they let Gillard down, telling Ellis: ‘You and I, in particular, because we both went in quite young, we were toughened to it because we had gone through it ourselves. It was our view, and it was Julia’s view as well, that you just get on with doing a good job. I didn’t call it out in the way I should have.’6
Senator Penny Wong, a cabinet member in Gillard’s government, wonders the same: ‘By not raising things earlier, did we actually not confront norms which then enabled it to go so far in the national abuse of the prime minister?’7
But Gillard hopes her experience will provide women with blueprints for future political careers. She told Ellis: ‘Women starting in the parliament now have got the fantastic benefit that they’ve seen this movie before. And when you think you’ve seen the movie before, your ability to think in advance about how you will react and what you will do if these moments come in your political career is far better than it’s ever been. That is such a huge advantage.’
The problem is, that is almost exactly what she told me, almost two decades ago.
And here we are.
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The story of women in parliament in Australia is the story, in vast part, of white women trying to enter places created for, controlled by and policed by white men. The vast majority were heterosexual, able bodied, cis and middle class. They were told to look and act in the ways white men would approve. They were told to make themselves physically pleasing to white men.