The Truth About Female Leadership

Julia Gillard is widely recognised as Australia’s only female serving Prime Minister, but behind that prestigious title was internal and external turmoil that would break the strongest of world leaders. Here she reveals how she navigated through the storm with her integrity and pride intact.

- Susan Armstrong

When Julia Gillard, author, founder, chair, board member and Australia’s 27th and only female Prime Minister was 22, she had just finished her term of office at the Australian Union of Students, “still an ardent feminist, but definitely a mainstream one. In the years that followed, as I completed my university education and started working at a law firm, I was increasingly attracted to pursuing a career in politics”, she reveals in her new book, Women and Leadership.

And what a career in politics it turned out to be. Just over 10 years ago, Gillard was sworn into office as Australia’s first female Prime Minister, leading a government that was the most productive in enacting new legislation in the nation’s history.

The policy achievements of the period included putting a price on carbon, education reform, the national broadband network, the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

BREAKING AN UNBREAKABLE STIGMA

Had she finally managed to smash the ultimate glass ceiling? Hardly. Right from the outset, Gillard faced unrelenting abuse, from the opposition party and the media, about everything from the colour of her jackets to the length of her earlobes, not to mention the fact she was a woman in leadership without a husband or a child. At best, the sexism was ludicrous, at worst is was visceral and grotesque.