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Australia’s First Female Prime Minister

Queen Emily

After a successful leadership challenge this morning, Julia Gillard is now Australia’s first female prime minister! Not only that, but Gillard is left-wing even by Australian standards, with a strong background in the trade union movement. Perhaps even more surprising to American readers used to politicians talking about their “families” in politics might be the fact that she’s neither married nor a mother.

Whilst this is amazing news, the Australian election is coming up soon. It is very late for a leadership change. Gillard certainly has a high profile as the former deputy PM, so hopefully she can connect quickly with voters more than her opponent, the odious religious conservative leader of the Liberals Tony Abbott (seriously the man is so slimey he literally oozes). The last thing Australia needs right now is a return to the paranoid, divisive Howard years.

17 thoughts on Australia’s First Female Prime Minister

  1. This was, in fact, the last day that a leadership spill could have happened. It’s the last day of Parliament before they break for 2 months, and it’s almost certain that the election would be called during that 2 month period.

    Gillard already has a fairly good rapport with the Australian public – polls have been putting her as being more popular than either Rudd or Abbott for awhile now, and she’s proven to be a good communicator who’s able to come through fairly grilling media interviews quite well.

  2. I’ll celebrate when she announces she is no longer following John Howard’s guidelines for running a country.

  3. My mother, a conservative Catholic woman despises Julia Gillard to an extent that surprises and slightly disturbs me.

    She may hate Gillard more than Paul Keating, the former Labor Treasurer and Prime Minister who more or less created modern Australia by reforming the economy drastically and saying things like the The Redfern Speech

    I’m not sure if it’s the fact that she is so unashamed of her Australian accent, in a way that seems wrong for a female leader, or whether it is the unmarried/childless thing, but the hatred seems visceral, as though her mere existenace is worse than Keating’s attack’s on 200 years of rascist culture.

  5. Self-described non-practising Baptist and considers herself non-religious, actually, according to a 2009 news article on politicians’ religious affiliations. Which is still pretty amazing!

  7. I got so emotional watching this transpire with my daughter (okay, so my daughter is two: she didn’t really watch so much as roll a ball across the floor waiting for Playschool to start.) There are many problems with the circumstances and no reason to believe Gillard will impress on every level. But it is a thrill to know that my daughter will grow up in a country that has had, finally, a woman at the helm.

  8. First female, atheist, red-haired Prime Minister sworn in by the first female Governor General (Quentin Bryce)!

    I’m still surprised about how fast it all transpired. I would have never had thought that Rudd would be out of office this time a few days ago. Kevin was in a good position, yes his popularity was falling (mining tax) but nobody was going to turn to Tony Abbott as a serious alternative.

  9. On another comments-type site (tech-related, mostly male), many promoted comments were “taking a stand” and saying “this isn’t news, what matters is her policies”. They rather drowned out the “hey, remember when the U.S. got a black president and that was news?”

    Anyone have a good sound bite/essay for me to use on people with that perspective?

  10. My elder daughter (aged 11) and her friends were running round at school, telling everyone they could find that Australia has a woman as its prime minister.

    They are growing up in a world where female prime ministers are not just a theoretical possibility, but a concrete reality.

  11. I’m so excited about this. Julia Gillard is the perfect foil for Tony Abbott — she makes him look like the buffoonish caveperson he is.

    Only thing is that this would make a Labor loss, if it were to happen at the next election, so much more disappointing. I’m so happy to have someone who isn’t a religious fundamentalist as PM.

  12. @lyle Personally, I think Gough Whitlam created much of modern Australia (with the creation of Medicare, Triple J etc etc) and that Keating began its neo-liberalisation…

    @Merinnan Yeah. The point is, she doesn’t have to make the gestures towards Christian piety obligatory in the US. Even John Howard’s Methodist background was more of an appeal to the 1950s white nation than anything particularly religious. Of course, Abbott is another kettle of fish, but I think that might be his undoing…

  13. When she was sworn in by the Governor-General, she affirmed her oath, rather than swearing on a bible.

    She’s not married, but partnered, to a man.

  14. I don’t see the “neither married nor a mother” part as particularly wonderful. In fact it’s yet another reminder that it’s women who haven’t got families who tend to be in top business and government jobs. Sure, some people of both (all?) genders are single, but for men family and career don’t seem to be in conflict, whereas for women it’s all too often one or the other but not both. In fact maybe a man without a family would seem unconnected to society and there’d be sure to be rumors that he’s gay. I wonder if the assumption is that a woman with a family would always have a split allegiance, without enough energy to give to the job.

  15. I think for any other job I’d agree with you, because marital status and parenthood are irrelevant to any job. And like you said, the presumptions about working mothers are themselves problematic.

    Why I *am* pleased with that is that the relationships of politicians are heavily politicised – and the heteronormative nuclear family photo-op is still practically obligatory in Australian politics. The ways politicians narrativise their lives and their relations to policy (“as a parent I…”) founds the symbolic fiction that the nation is just like a heterosexual nuclear family, or should be (all the rhetoric about the “Australian mums and dads,” families etc). I’ve got a lot of searches for “julia gillard lesbian” (and other less savoury variations) over the last while, and so it seems to me that there *is* some suspicion about her sexuality based on her gender presentation (all that attention on her short hair) and her being unmarried and childfree. As a queer trans woman I can’t help but be pleased that there is finally some form of queering of the PM spot in Australia, however mild that may be.

  16. In Slovakia, we are about to get our first female prime minister: Iveta Radicova.
    Indeed, I am happy that Slovak children will be “growing up in a world where female prime ministers are not just a theoretical possibility, but a concrete reality”, as Deborah said.

  17. women who haven’t got families

    I am sure both her parents as well as her committed life partner will be fascinated to know that they have all died suddenly.

    She’s not a fucking woman without a family.

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