by Julia Baird
Much of the coverage surrounding Bishop was marked with astonishment: where had this woman come from? Could she actually become prime minister? What was her motivation? Some explanation for her success in creating and sustaining a profile can be found in the relentless search by the Australian press for our own ‘Steel Sheilas’ over the two decades before Bishop entered parliament. In the 1970s and 1980s, patterns of reporting had been established which saw an earnest search for Australia’s first female prime minister accompanied by genuine surprise: first that a woman could be capable of such ambition, and second that she could still appear well groomed. The search for our own ‘iron lady’ had occupied many reporters and editorial writers, but usually the subject of their hopes was either unwilling or unlikely to be voted into a position of leadership. Few had the support of their colleagues, and found journalists — or even the public, if we are to believe the polls — far more eager than the men they worked with to see a woman in a powerful position. The interest of the media can be likened to that of an overexcited labrador bowling over a stranger at the gate: for all their enthusiasm and good intentions, the object of their affection usually just ends up muddied, dribbled on, or looking silly.
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The decades-long search for Australia’s Steel Sheilas was clear in the Bulletin article published in 1981 which predicted the appearance of a female PM:
Britain has its Iron lady; the Philippines its Iron Butterfly, Imelda Marcos; and America the Steel Magnolia, Roslyn Carter. For its part, Australia is finally on the way to tempering its own formidable first lady. Women are flocking into politics in numbers that mean it is only a matter of time before one of them outwits, outmanoeuvres and overwhelms the male contenders for the role of top dog — or bitch. The first female prime minister may well be dubbed, as convention demands of women in power, the Steel Sheila.2
Iron Butterfly. Steel Sheila. Iron Maiden. Ice Maiden. The ‘iron hand in the velvet glove’. Mrs Ironpants. Once the epithet ‘iron lady’, with its simple juxtaposition of strength and femininity, was established as a title not just for Britain’s Margaret Thatcher but for any woman in a position of power, the number of antipodean adaptations flourished. In the 1970s, most women running for parliament, irrespective of their political beliefs, were asked the same question: are you like Margaret Thatcher?
From the mid-1970s, journalists were keen to see an Australian Thatcher — or, at least, were interested in the idea of one. Women who were elected to either upper-house positions or lower-house seats were asked if they aspired to be leader of the party, the state or the country at first gasp (even if not possible). When a woman was appointed to cabinet, commentators made predictions as though calling a horserace: would this be the first female premier or prime minister? The hunt has usually been counterproductive and unrealistic.
For many women, the comparison to the ‘iron lady’ was welcome, as it implied success, efficiency, and competence. Thatcher herself appeared to be far from displeased with the label. She told reporters in 1975: ‘I get very wild with people who don’t realise that under all this . . . [tapping a gold suit button] there’s a bit of tough steel that is me.’3 In the 1970s, female politicians were battling stereotypes that portrayed women as uninterested in politics and incapable of withstanding its physical and mental demands. Donald Horne wrote in A Time of Hope that for most of the 20th century the prevailing culture in Australia included sexist strains which considered it ‘obvious that men were stronger, more practical minded, less emotional, more able to run things than women’.4 In 1978, former prime minister Sir William McMahon said women were too soft for ‘the tough and ruthless job of prime minister’ and Australian women were unlikely to occupy the position he had filled. ‘I think women are more kind-hearted to the underdog than men and I think this is an enormous disadvantage in political life,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you would find a woman with the toughness and relentlessness.’5
Women who were effective or competent were cooed over as marvels, women not of flesh but steel. The ‘iron lady’ label, used most frequently for conservative female politicians who became ministers, emerged when they were simply exercising authority or making decisions. In the 1970s and 1980s, the tag was applied particularly to an elite and powerful group of state and federal Liberal MPs who rose to ministry positions: Senator Margaret Guilfoyle, NSW MLC Virginia Chadwick, West Australian MLA June Craig, and NSW MLA Rosemary Foot. All were considered possible future leaders, and all were described at some stage as the most powerful female politician in the country. The ‘iron lady’ label meant their competence or assertiveness was exaggerated, so they seemed crueller, tougher and harder: not just than other women but their male colleagues as well.
The first ‘woman of steel’ was Victorian Liberal MP Margaret Guilfoyle. Initially headlined as ‘a mother with political ambitions’, by the mid-1970s Guilfoyle was known nationally as the ‘Iron Butterfly’. She also quickly, predictably, drew comparisons to Thatcher because of her first name, conservative political views, professional training, neat appearance, and — apparently — the fact that she too was ‘quietly proving that she’s not just an attractive face’.6 One reporter claimed Guilfoyle was being compared with Thatcher simply because ‘like Mrs Thatcher, Sen. Guilfoyle has a husband and a family’.7 She was widely respected as an excellent minister though. Press gallery veteran Michelle Grattan believes she was a ‘stand-out’ politician, canny and clever.
Guilfoyle, an accountant, was elected to the Senate in 1971 after working her way up through the influential women’s branch of the Victorian Liberal Party. She aimed to keep press coverage limited to her work, and, from the moment she was elected, refused to divulge details about her private life. Speculation about her leadership potential emerged in 1975 and continued for several years. The Sun-Herald political correspondent Chris Anderson wrote: ‘Her party supporters claim that she could be promoted as a non-Labor leader like Britain’s Mrs Margaret Thatcher.’8 According to press gallery journalists, however, these rumours were never taken seriously. Guilfoyle, called ‘Australia’s most successful woman politician’ in 1979, continually denied having any aspirations beyond cabinet, telling journalists neither politicians nor the public were ready for a woman political leader, and that she and her female peers lacked the necessary experience, unlike Thatcher.9
Rosemary Foot had a similar experience. After winning the blue-ribbon NSW seat of Vaucluse for the Liberal Party in the 1978 election, and being appointed opposition spokeswoman on youth and community services in 1980, she was frequently asked about Thatcher. Even the South China Morning Post called her the ‘Iron Lady of Down Under’.10 Foot told journalists she considered Thatcher a role model, and allowed herself to be photographed with a renowned Thatcher impersonator, British actress Janet Brown, drinking tea at the Boulevard Hotel. However, like Guilfoyle, she was careful to point out the comparisons were superficial:
Margaret Thatcher did not become Prime Minister until she had been in politics 20 years; certain people expected me to be ready for a leadership role after I had been in politics two years. There are several things that must not be forgotten about Margaret Thatcher. She has been a career woman all her life, except for the four months she took off to have twins. With 35 years of professional experience, degrees in law and science, and the capacity to live on four hours sleep a night, she’s a hard act to emulate . . . Would I want to be prime minister? I do believe I’ve got leadership qualities, but I would never nominate myself for a top job if I didn’t feel entirely equal to it . . . If the cards fall in the right way, if my physical stamina is what I hope it will be in 10 years, and if my learning curve keeps at its present rate — then yes, those top jobs would interest me.11
Top jobs interest most politicians. It’s just not always a realistic prospect.
Journalists regularly felt the need to point out that successful competent female politicians were also feminine and attractive. Journalist Catherine Menagh wrote that Lib
eral West Australian minister June Craig gave ‘an impression of calm elegance rather than the hard-headedness one might expect to see in a woman who has risen to a cabinet position’.12
When under pressure as a minister, NSW Liberal MP Virginia Chadwick was frequently physically scrutinised for signs of stress and strain. The neatness of her appearance was often referred to by journalists in times of crisis, as though she was expected to emerge from her office with wild hair and torn clothes. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Matthew Moore compared the disasters springing up in her portfolio to an apparent ‘effortless manner and poise’: ‘This week, everything fell to bits except the unflappable hairdo.’13
Australia’s Steel Sheilas were called tough when simply doing their job — particularly if cutting resources, making unpopular decisions and displaying resolve. As the minister for social security, just about any decision Guilfoyle made was depicted as severe. This happened frequently when she was forced to face the ‘razor gang’ which oversaw the finances of federal government departments, and, in the late 1970s, was annually under pressure to reduce budgets.14 Virginia Chadwick was similarly dubbed an iron maiden after she was made minister for family and community services (FACS) in 1988, and had signalled her intention to shake up and streamline the department.15
As Chadwick told me in 1996, comparisons with Thatcher were:
. . . a natural corollary if you’re having to do tough things, like closing things, sacking people or restructuring things . . . I did get that a bit, and funnily enough I don’t think it was to do so much with Thatcherite politics . . . as a very simple way of people [thinking] a person capable of making tough decisions therefore must be like Maggie Thatcher . . . What I always found somewhat amusing, quite apart from the fact that it’s physically impossible, is that it is just the language that always goes back to the male — that if you’re strong and resolute, it’s not because you’ve got backbone, it’s because you’ve got balls, so there’s always a reference back to male vernacular in terms of a woman who is strong or resolute, and often that can be as negative as it can be positive . . . it’s like she’s not a real woman, so it is a double-edged thing.
‘Iron Lady’ was a cliché both trivial and lazy. Did it matter at all? In the 1970s, Guilfoyle shrugged it off as generic and unoriginal, saying she had never thought of it as a personal nickname: ‘Most women in politics are dubbed with that title, or a variation of it, at some time . . .’16 But Anne Summers, then a National Times reporter, wrote at the time that Guilfoyle was visibly perturbed about her tough image.17 What she objected to was the implication that the minister or department responsible for welfare payments to the nation’s unemployed, ill, elderly, and disabled was cold and uncaring. As she told journalist Alex Kennedy, the ‘hard woman’ stereotype did bother her, ‘especially if that image of myself is in any way transferred to my department. We try at all times to be fair and reasonable’.18
After the 1983 election, which saw Labor’s Bob Hawke voted in as prime minister, Guilfoyle did not seek reappointment to the shadow ministry, announcing she would retire at the next election. After this, she disappeared from newsprint. But even the article about her retirement contained a reference to an apparent contradiction between her femininity and her job, as well as to a rapidly fading memory of her reputation and competence: ‘It’s difficult to imagine that this immaculately attired woman with the delightfully genial manner could have carried out the tough and uncompromising roles of both social security and finance minister. But carry them out she did and, during the Fraser years, was responsible for many hard decisions on government spending. Those heady days are gone.’19
Heady days!
But by the late 1980s, a growing cynicism about politicians meant that those who were seen to deviate from the norm were increasingly welcome. It was no longer considered to be an automatic liability to be female and in 1990 two women became state premiers. The critical shift occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as political scientists began to point to election results with two critical findings: female candidates were not voted against on the grounds of their gender, and women voted differently to men. Women became increasingly aware of, and able to exploit, the fact that many voters believed them to be different from men, to be more honest, idealistic and untainted by a corrupt political system. As education minister, for example, Virginia Chadwick continued the policies of her male predecessor, but because of what was perceived to be a more feminine, consultative, compassionate approach, she was considered more acceptable.20 Women historically have been disproportionately allocated more nurturing, ‘soft’ social portfolios, such as education, health, family and consumer affairs, as an extension of a caring, motherly role.21 However, the expectation of virtuosity in women often proves to be a burden for those who are percieved to fall short of these standards.
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It was not Bronwyn Bishop’s virtue that was the problem, though. It was her supposed vices: ambition, and determination to go further than any woman ever had — the Lodge. It took many attempts, and at times bloody and botched preselections, before she was successful in gaining a seat in parliament. Bishop was prepared to be the woman journalists had been hunting for. Asked, like so many women before her, if she wanted to be Australia’s first female prime minister, the answer was an unambivalent yes. At last, here was the woman willing to dispense with the velvet glove and unsheath the iron fist.
Bishop consciously modelled herself on Margaret Thatcher, and displayed on her desk a framed photograph of herself shaking Thatcher’s hand. This photograph was reproduced and referred to countless times. Journalists made the comparison so much it turned what was already a tired cliché into a convention. True to historical form, the comparison was usually made in a superficial way: it was about being a conservative female politician with blonde hair and an apparent ambition. The most striking similarity, apart from some physical attributes (a fondness for pearls and unmoving hair), was that they both claimed they could survive on four hours sleep a night. Bishop usually brushed off the comparisons without discouraging them. In 1989, she protested to New Idea: ‘People have been kind enough to make comparisons, but the truth of the matter is she is the leader of Great Britain, she is Margaret Thatcher and I am Bronwyn Bishop, here in Australia.’22 In 1992, she told a Canberra reporter: ‘The Iron Lady might be just a term of strength, I don’t know, but I am me, I am my own person, I decide my own priorities. I find it interesting that people find it necessary to say a woman politician has to have a model.’23 Many commentators dismissed the comparisons to Thatcher as lacking in substance. But after political journalist Paul Lyneham described her as a mix of Edna Everage, Margaret Thatcher and a Sherman tank, Bishop placed gladioli on her desk alongside her photograph of Thatcher, and ordered a staff member to find her a toy tank for a party she was holding that night.
Just as Thatcher inspired fear in men, Bishop inspired a kind of hatred. The loathing expressed was quite extraordinary and excessive. A recurring theme in articles about her is the vitriol of Liberal MPs who freely spoke to journalists off the record. David Leser, Bishop’s unofficial biographer, records Liberal MP John Hannaford saying that, in his 25 years in the party, he never knew anyone who was so prepared to use people then dump them. NSW Liberal John Dowd said she was ‘foul’, ‘ugly’ and ‘very unpleasant’ at times. Members of the Labor Party were also vehemently critical, particularly Gareth Evans, Labor foreign minister from 1988 to 1996, and the government leader in the Senate when Bishop was there. He once threatened to garrotte her in parliament. Liberal Ted Pickering, a member of the NSW upper house from 1976 to 1995 and NSW police minister from 1988 to 1992, said she represented ‘the unacceptable face of the Liberal Party’, and that she had taught her daughters to urinate standing up because she was so angry about the treatment of women.24 Bishop was indignant when told this: ‘That is such a lie. I’ll tell you a story. [A prominent woman lawyer] when she got pregnant said that “the only way my daughter
will get to be chief judge on the High Court is if I teach her to urinate standing up.” So he can’t even get his story right.’
Was it her naked ambition that upset her colleagues? Bishop had been telling friends since she was a teenager that she wanted to be prime minister of Australia, as blokes sometimes do. Her standard response to journalists’ questions of whether she wanted to be PM was: ‘I came into politics to serve my country and my party, and I’ll do it whichever way I’m asked.’25 The headline to a profile by Peter Ward in the Australian Magazine in March 1989 was ‘Bronwyn Bishop: The Woman who would be Prime Minister’. The photograph featured Bishop in football shorts. Sports commentator and columnist Mike Gibson said she had attracted more publicity then any other politician because she was:
The most voraciously ambitious woman Australian politics has ever seen . . . Name any other female politician who has courted so much media attention, been so avidly analysed by so many commentators, attracted so many words on everything from the bricklayer who does her hair, to the shade of her lipstick and the height of her stiletto heels . . . Bronwyn Bishop is so tough, she blow dries her hair in the exhaust of her limo.26