Australian women welcomed their first woman prime minister this week, but warned that the unmarried, childless Julia Gillard could face a gender backlash in a land known for its macho culture.
Forty years after Australia’s Germaine Greer penned The Female Eunuch, which unpicked the traditional role of women, Gillard was appointed on Thursday in an historic moment seen as the realization of a feminist fantasy.
The fact that Gillard was sworn in by another woman — Governor General Quentin Bryce, the first woman to hold the post as Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in the country, appeared the icing on the cake.
“It’s precisely what our mothers — and Germaine! — hoped would one day happen, as they argued, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, for fundamental changes to the fabric of the nation,” the Australian’s Caroline Overington wrote. “Imagine that, 30 years ago: an unmarried woman, living in sin with a man. Who is a hairdresser. And aspiring to high office. Forget about it. That’s how far we’ve come.”
The change which brings Welsh-born Gillard, 48, to the top job will shake up the land of “cold beer and untrammeled misogyny,” according to expatriate writer Kathy Lette.
“Let me say Australian men are quaking in their Ugg boots, because even though we’re one of the first countries in the world to give women the vote, it’s a very sexist country,” she told Britain’s Sky News.
Veteran feminist campaigner Eva Cox said she delighted in the moment, but acknowledged that the brutal cut and thrust of Australian politics was “still very much a brotherhood.”
“It feels nice seeing all these woman doing things. It was lovely seeing her and the governor-general yesterday,” Cox said of Gillard. “But is it the revolution? No. Have we cracked the glass ceiling? No. Will it change the culture? No, unfortunately.”
With Gillard’s Labor Party flailing in the polls against a conservative opposition led by man’s man Tony Abbott, Cox said women were sometimes appointed to lead parties because they were “good at cleaning up messes.”
Such is the case with New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally, who heads the Labor Party in the country’s most populous state and is known for her windswept hairstyle as much as her government’s transport and health failings.
Keneally may have some support from state governor Marie Bashir, who is also the first female in that position, who has said she would not remove the premier unless there was a successful no-confidence motion.
“It’s never easy being a pioneer,” said the only other woman currently leading a state, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, adding that Gillard will face intense scrutiny in the role.
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