I see no sign that ‘ugly Australia’ has learnt from its treatment of Gillard

It is not surprising that Julia Gillard has not watched Strong Female Lead, the documentary about how she was vilified and demeaned while serving as Australia’s first female prime minister from 2010 to 2013. “I’m aware of the content,” she said drolly in a videoed message this week, “as of course, I was there.”

No need for her to be retraumatised while the rest of us are reminded of the relentless efforts, by the opposition, many in the media and, increasingly, numbers of her own male colleagues, to undermine her legitimacy and, ultimately, orchestrate her removal from office.

Julia Gillard on the day she was sworn in as prime minister in 2010, with the then governor-general, Quentin Bryce.Credit: Government House

When the hugely popular Gillard, then deputy prime minister, agreed to challenge Kevin Rudd for the top job, I am sure she had no idea what she was in for. Previous Labor leaders had “back-stabbed” their predecessors, and everyone got over it, especially caucus members who relished staying in office. Why not this time?

The answer, of course, lies in her gender. Too many Australians apparently could not hack having a woman leading the nation. Why this was, and remains, the case is still unexplained – perhaps inexplicable – but Strong Female Lead provides grim confirmation of what happened.

There is nothing in the film that I had not seen, or written about, but I still gasped watching radio shock jocks trash Gillard’s father, ask her impertinent questions about her live-in partner’s sexuality, or chide the prime minister for arriving a few minutes late to his studio. We were not shown the very worst of the Larry Pickering cartoons depicting a naked PM carrying a giant dildo but what we did see was bad enough, as were the vile photoshopped sexualised images that many thousands of ordinary Australians received via workplace email chains.

It is hard to fathom the source of the anger among so many apparently average Australians but there was no mistaking its depth. Nor the unambiguously sexual nature of their taunts. Why, in a march against a carbon tax, would you carry a hand-written sign “Sack the crack”? Or describe the prime minister as “a lying scrag”? Or a “moll”? It’s not in the film, but I was aware of a woman who screamed this word at Gillard from the public gallery in Parliament House during question time.

How could it be that instead of celebrating an historic milestone for gender equality in this country, so many Australians discovered their inner misogynist and joined the ugly mobs braying for her demise? It was “disgusting”, says Rob Oakeshott, one of the independents who delivered Gillard government after the 2010 election returned a hung Parliament, speaking in the House the day after Gillard was deposed. He hoped things would improve. “But,” he added, “we’ve got to deal with ugly Australia.”

I see no signs that we have done that.

Gillard wants us to analyse what happened, not to be infuriated or even saddened, but to “glean the lessons that will help us shape the best tomorrow”. She is doing her bit, having established the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at Kings College London (with a branch in Canberra), employing academics to produce hard data on the barriers to women succeeding. Notably, she wants research on “the way negativity impacts the evaluation of women leaders”.

Australia is not the only country that can’t cope with female leaders. Hillary Clinton copped a comparably crude and sexist onslaught. Indeed, some of the materials used against Gillard were direct imports from the United States. Notably, the infamous Liberal Party dinner menu featuring a “Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail: small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box”, was virtually a carbon copy of a Clinton menu (minus the “red box”, Americans being somewhat puritanical when it comes to certain anatomical features it seems).

When Kamala Harris was elected US Vice-President, a group of influential women formed a posse to “have her back” in the event of a similarly offensive blitz. Female political leaders around the world describe being belittled, treated less seriously, judged on their appearance or their clothes and constantly asked how they manage family responsibilities. Questions male politicians rarely must answer.

Many of the comments I’ve seen about Strong Female Lead express the hope that the widespread showing of this film will shame us into better behaviour. I wish I could share their optimism, but I see few, if any, signs that Australian federal politics is improving for women.

You only need read the torrid memoirs by Julia Banks and Kate Ellis for graphic accounts of very recent shocking behaviour by their male parliamentary colleagues. Or look what happened to Julie Bishop, hounded out after being humiliated in a Liberal leadership ballot.

And there is zero leadership from the top. Scott Morrison’s contempt for women is on almost daily display: refusing to legislate an important recommendation from his Sex Discrimination Commissioner about workplace safety, declining to investigate an allegation of rape against a cabinet colleague. And, something all of us can see at question time: the Prime Minister turning his back every time Tanya Plibersek approaches the dispatch box.

Twitter: @SummersAnne

Anne Summers gave permission to the producers of Strong Female Lead to have access to some of her papers stored in the National Library.