Why Julia is a heroine to creaky feminist gorgons

AS we all know by now, Julia Gillard is a woman.

If the import of this fact has not already caused your world view to shift with seismic force, then the avalanche of banality - in the style of Year 8 schoolgirl essayists set the task of describing "Why I would like to be acting prime minister" - may cause a little trembling or even nausea.

As for me, along with 90 per cent of the female population living lives of unutterable suburban drudgery, the undeniable femaleness of the two-day Acting Prime Minister failed to inspire any paeans of deliverance from the chains of the patriarchy. We are rather too busy getting on with our lives: educating our children, cooking the meals, putting the washing on the line and (dare I say it) changing the nappies, while also working in schools, shops, offices and hospitals, and writing columns, to be bothered about the symbolic import of Gillard's elevation.

Gillard, though, was naturally inclined to conform to the role model feminist mantra, saying that mothers had brought their daughters to see her during the election campaign and hoping that they would pause to recognise the significance of her short-lived elevation.

Unfortunately, we have come to expect from the press that this boring, public obeisance to feminist orthodoxy is normal whenever a powerful woman arrives on the scene. Why?

There is no apparent reason, other than Kevin Rudd, why Gillard could not attain the prime ministership if she wanted it. After all, unlike Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, Gillard is not the mother of 12 children, or any children, an obvious barrier to being prime minister. She is ambitious, talented and seemingly sane; indeed, I was surprised that she didn't beat Mark Latham for the Labor leadership.

Above all, as a childless woman, she is at least unencumbered by the preoccupation with what makes a life of public office unattractive to most women: children, money troubles and her husband's smelly socks; in short, a family.

However, that doesn't stop the dying gasps of old-fashioned strident feminists, feeding off the Julia factor and naturally never getting it quite right.

Women who attain high public office are the natural heroines of those creaky old gorgons, not because of virtue but because the sisterhood has always elevated power over virtue and condemned marriage and children as domestic slavery. They would rather see children reared by paid carers than their own mothers (known in Eva Cox fem-speak as home-based carers).

Indeed, they would rather see women deprived of children than deprived of a job because women in this world view are not really valuable as just mothers. They are valuable only if they are also workers.

The notion that caused a lot of huffing and puffing last year, that Gillard could not represent the average Australian because she was "deliberately barren" and had no acquaintance with the uses of the bucket and a product called Napisan, was deemed deeply offensive by the ultra-PC press gallery. But, really, it was wrong on only one count: that her circumstances would bar her from rising to her new position.

After all, how could Gillard become Deputy Prime Minister and represent anyone's interests in that role if she did have any children? Her childlessness, ironically for the huffy-puffy media, is exactly why Gillard is a natural feminist heroine. She can devote her entire life to the pursuit of office and power.

Unfortunately this also means (heaping irony on irony) that this feminist heroine has almost nothing in common with most ordinary Australian women, except perhaps the voice.

But all the hullabaloo about Gillard ought to tell us something about Australia. Are we a backward conservative nation? We all know Margaret Thatcher did it in Britain years ago and, because she was a conservative, the feminists betrayed their game as a bizarre leftie ideological construct, declaring that Thatcher wasn't really a woman.

The Norwegians and the Icelanders have had female prime ministers, but would I rather live in any of those frigid places, let alone in the warmer climes of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or India, simply because a woman has made it to the top?

Unfortunately, in this all-new inclusive age, Australia does lag and this hasn't got anything to do with gender equity. Try being an Aboriginal girl, or for that matter a boy, in Australia and see how far you will get up that famous ladder of opportunity.

But perhaps there is value in imagery. I am writing this column having just returned from Matt Price's memorial service at Parliament House, which was a precedent for a journalist. I knew him as a friend, a neighbour and a very involved dad at my children's school. He was popular and clever but, as a journalist above all, Matt loved imagery. Frequently with Matt's style of journalism, the imagery was the story.

When Gillard was being touted as the leader of the Labor Party it was Matt's firm view, which he delivered in columns and quite definitively at my kitchen bench one afternoon, that "a single woman will never be elected prime minister of this country". The Acting Prime Minister, Gillard, was the first speaker at his memorial service. How Matt would have appreciated the irony.