To recap: See Women owe society neither babies nor excuses. As this post does, it jumps off from the following remark by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to Nina Funnell:
At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the “excuse” that “all” young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I’ve come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.
I’d like to think this was a one-off thoughtless comment, but it’s not. It’s just a slice of the “wimminz are for babiez” pie. I’d like to share with you another slice, one Rudd might have thought of before making his comment, as this kind of sentiment is heaped on his deputy all the time.
Julia Gillard is Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister. And the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and also the Minister for Social Inclusion. She became the first woman to run the country (well, you know, apart from the Queen) when in 2007 she assumed the role of Acting Prime Minister while Kevin Rudd was overseas. I don’t like everything she’s done, but you’ve got to hand it to her, Gillard is an accomplished politician. Yet her short red hair is a constant topic of national conversation. In fact, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail has a whole gallery of her changing hairstyles! There’ve been rumours and jokes that she’s a Sekrit Lesbian because apparently some people (read: straight men) can’t deal with the idea of a powerful woman who doesn’t take shit and thus must, um, well, the logic fails, really. (I must say I am rather amused that my blog’s the number one result on google for the search term ‘julia gillard dyke’.) But the thing that has disgusted me the most have been the assertions that she’s not fit to lead and that her opinions don’t count because she hasn’t any children.
Famously, in 2007, Senator Bill Heffernan of the Liberal Party (Gillard and Rudd are members of Labor) said that Gillard wouldn’t do well at running the country because she is ‘deliberately barren’. He subsequently apologised. It was… well, you can imagine how jaws dropped across Australia. But it didn’t end there.
Recently there’s been a national discussion, shall we say, about virginity. This was sparked by an interview given to the Australian Women’s Weekly by Tony Abbott, who is the Federal Opposition Leader. (That is, the head of the Liberal Party. The role of the opposition party is to act as an alternative government, pushing against the government and being the rival party during elections. Liberal and Labor are the two main Australian political parties, so one is always in power or in opposition. The Liberal Party is actually the primary conservative party, and Labor is more to the left but not actually to the left. Anyway, back to Tony Abbott.) He discussed his advice to his daughters about virginity and his thoughts on abstinence in general; you can read a bit about it here. His remarks could take a post all on its own, but I want to talk about a chain of responses that ensued. Julia Gillard said, ‘Australian women want to make their own choices and they don’t want to be lectured to by Mr Abbott’. To which Liberal Senator George Brandis replied ‘the vehemence of her reaction in fact shows that she just doesn’t understand the way parents think’.
‘I think that although Julia Gillard is a very clever politician, she is very much a one-dimensional person and I do think her reaction, her over-reaction to the, in my view, quite unexceptionable remarks Tony Abbott made as the father of daughters, is not something she would have said if she were herself the mother of teenage daughters.’
Emphasis mine. Gillard continues to be treated as though she’s a person of fewer dimensions than some because she doesn’t have children. Less worthy of being in power, of having an opinion. She’s being held to different standards than a male politician without children in her position would be. Implicitly, she’s not worthy as a woman, because she’s not fulfilling women’s roles: she’s politically powerful and she’s not a mother. The way Gillard is treated is pretty disgusting, and it’s shameless and public, too.
We need to make it okay for women to be in public life; to be prominent, and powerful, and successful, and a woman all at the same time. We need to make it no big deal to be a woman with no children in the public sphere, and we need to make it viable to be a woman with children in same. We need to accept all women as proper women irrespective of whether they reproduce or not (which isn’t, as Brandis seems to think, a choice for everyone). We need to make it okay.
I salute Ms Gillard for holding her head up through all the bullshit she has to deal with.
Of course she’s not a worthy woman, have you listened to her voice? She sounds like she’s from the suburbs or something! (/sarcasm for those less familiar with the constant commentary on Gillard’s voice).
In defense of Australia’s politicians, I did hear two people remark that a male polly wasn’t in the best place to be leader of his party because he has three children at home under school age. One of them was even a man. It may be the first time in my memory that anyone has made any acknowledgment that a male politician has responsibilities to his small kids. Two voices (both on the ABC, although the bloke was a polly himself) and I feel the need to celebrate. Sad, really.
People do like to comment on the sexuality of confident powerful women. And the men in their lives, should there be any. This sounds awfully familiar — there’s a long list of USian politicians (and some Canadian whose names I should remember but don’t) about whom pretty much exactly the same things were said.
I don’t suppose it occurs to any of these gossiping twerps that for some of us our status as non-parents is neither entierly voluntary nor entirely welcome? Of course I’m not a powerful political figure either, so I probably shouldn’t be taking any of this at all personally. (Snark may be safely assumed.)
Very awesome post. I really do admire Gillard, dealing with all the shit she does but still holding her head high. She is a damn fine politician, and probably worked her arse off to get there. I was having a convo with a friend the other day, and he said that, because she’s a woman in such a high position of power, she must be damn good. His reasoning is that there are so few women there, because women have to work twice as hard to be noticed, so she’s probably done the same.
Sorry, rambling. I’m a bit of a Gillard fangirl :P
thing is, I know that if she *did* have children, her ability to lead would be questioned. After all, aren’t her responsibilities split between work and family etc. etc. bullshit.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Gillard for PM!
Everyone also seemed to forget that while Ms Gillard doesn’t have any daughters, she is herself a daughter, who grew up with a lot of old male politicians knowing what was best for her. Maybe her opinions is based on the lived experience of being a daughter? So what if she doesn’t know what it’s like to be a parent? This wasn’t about the parents. It was about the daughters and how to raise them. Who knows best the consequences of different methods of raising daughters? Why the daughters themselves, of course, they’re the ones who live with the consequences – not the parents.
But that is yet another example of old (male) politicians thinking that parents always know what’s best for their children. ‘Cause you know… children and young people can’t think for themselves, they need to be told what to think. Bleargh.
k0, you’re probably thinking of Belinda Stronach.
I’m so bloody appalled at this. That Deliberately Barren comment… Grrrrrr.
I don’t know whether it’s at all comforting to know that Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand for nine years, and now head of the United Nations Development Programme, faced exactly the same criticism during her years in power. Faced it, faced it down, and left her critics looking small-minded and pathetic.
Jemima: That was my first thought, too! But hey, I guess I should have remembered that the insights about teenage girls gained from having been a teenage girl in no way measure up to the deep insights of old dudes who totally have a
frienddaughter who’sblacka girl because they know what it’s really like! /snarkEw!!! So becoming a parent means that I will suddenly understand that it is okay to view my daughter’s body as a gift properly belonging to her husband rather than herself? Having a daughter will magically make me completely reverse a lifetime of belief in women’s right to equality and self-determination? It will suddenly become clear to me that women really ought to be condescended to and controlled?
Now of course if she had children she would be insulted for being in the public sphere and not focusing solely on her kids. If she had only one child she would be lambasted for not having more and called selfish and too career-oriented. If she was a single mother, well..well that just wouldn’t be too good for her as far as backlash goes.
Gillard has always been my “if i could have anyone who could actually plausibly become PM, i think she’d be good”. There may be better out there, but shes one i know near the top who seems better than Rudd.
As for the secret lesbian thing, heard that before. Helen Clarke always got the whole “she’s ugly and has short hair and is a lesbian” from a few people. Also her husband (can’t remember his name) was often attacked as being gay. Which I thought was worse in a way as he was someone who wasn’t trying to be in the public political sphere but even so he still got attacked.
And seriously, i am so sick of the term “nanny state”, which got put out a whole lot more when a woman was in charge.
“Gillard continues to be treated as though she’s a person of fewer dimensions than some because she doesn’t have children. Less worthy of being in power, of having an opinion. She’s being held to different standards than a male politician without children in her position would be.”
Really? Look at how men in the same position are treated: a good counter example’s Gordon Brown. He’s doing okay now he’s married with kids; but it wasn’t that long ago that he was facing exactly the same accusations about being one dimensional, childless, weird, and secretly gay.
Fair enough, james; I was specifically referring to the Australian Deputy Primeministership there just to clarify.
Well, I was about to bring up Helen Clark. I think she faced the inferences that since she had not had children then she couldn’t possibly have any idea about the needs of working mothers or what “real” family life entailed quite well. But it was still aggravating as hell that she had to face them down repeatedly in the first place.
Also agree that the whole stigma that the Labour Party was tarred with (ushering in the “Nanny State”) really lingered due to having a female leader. Even in her absence, the image has remained.
If you add Gordon Brown into the mix it adds another dimension to the issue still doesn’t change the problem or invalidate the underlying argument that people who choose to be childless are being stigmatised for their choices – and that women more often than not, are the ones who are targeted.