Misogyny and misrepresentation

Abstract

Australia’s first woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was sworn into office in 2010. In 2012 she was driven to make a powerful speech on misogyny, which reverberated around the world. This research note explores the circumstances prompting the Prime Minister’s speech and argues that the arrival of a woman Prime Minister helped bring into the open the gendered nature of politics. At a more formal level, sexist commentary focused on issues such as the Prime Minister’s decision to be ‘deliberately barren’. On talkback radio and the internet, sexual vilification took on more sexualized and violent forms. Increased awareness of the hostility being expressed about women in public life led to a feminist counter-campaign in 2012 using social media.In addition to the main argument, data is presented about the representation of women in Australian politics and the way that this has recently declined. It shows that electoral victories by parties that do not use gender electoral quotas have been largely responsible; Australia slipped from 15th to 45th place in the Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking for representation of women in national parliaments between 1999 and February 2013. The renewed attention to gender in politics is unlikely to halt this slippage in the short term.

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