Julia Gillard named on BBC 100 Women list

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been named on BBC’s annual 100 Women List.

The list identifies “inspirational women across the globe – from high profile names to unsung heroes” in fields including finance, politics, law, sport, charity, science and the arts, as well activists and campaigners who have effected change.

Ranging in age from 15 to 94, they come from more than 60 countries, including for the first time women from Belize, Cuba, Czech Republic, El Salvador, Laos and Namibia.

Some of the most recognisable names on the list include Stacey Cunningham, President of the New York Stock Exchange; Chilean writer Isabel Allende; Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN.

In-depth ‘Big Interviews’ with them will air on BBC World News as part of the BBC’s 100 Women season. Yalda Hakim asked her what advice would she give women who are struggling to break through their own glass ceilings:

You were Australia’s first female prime minister, and then since leaving office you’ve said to a lot of women who want to go into politics: ‘look go for it’, but you’ve also repeatedly said there’s this other bit, the misogyny bit, the sexism bit, don’t pretend it isn’t there.  Were you prepared for the kind of attacks you came under?

No I wasn’t and I sort of entered into parliament not having really felt in a personal way sexism or misogyny, of course I knew it existed, I was an active feminist at university. I thought the rate of change would be pretty fast. And if you’d asked me back then, ‘will all of this be fixed by the time you’re in your forties or fifties?’ I’d have said ‘yes absolutely – it’ll all be fixed by then.’ But you know I did go into a law firm, which was overwhelmingly male at the leadership level. But even with that I didn’t really feel directly sexism, so by the time I was prime minister and the sort of gendered abuse was flying, it did take me aback that it could get as bad as that and that there was still so much sexism lying under the surface of our society and I think many other societies around the world. And when it came to a woman leader it sort of broke through.

Why were you surprised? I mean Australia is quite a patriarchal society, as advanced as it is, I mean that’s just a fact?

Well I have to go all defence of my country at this point. I think Australia is very similar to many countries at a similar stage of development and democracies, which is that we still don’t have anywhere near fifty percent women in parliament, women aren’t well represented on corporate boards, CEOs, increasingly well represented in the law, but not in the news media. Still not represented equally in technology. I think we share all of those factors with the world. Yes, it’s a blokey culture.  And many of our turns of phrase are you know sort of male, mateship, masculine turns of phrase – I never felt alienated by any of that and I don’t feel alienated by that now. What took me by surprise was something much more pointed and much sharper.

What was that?

Well really it was you know the go to gendered insult, the signs outside parliament house saying ‘ditch the witch’ – meaning me – referring to me as a bitch. The way in which there were pornographic cartoons circulated about me. The incredibly violent often violent things said on social media. The fact that much of the imagery that was woven around me in the parliament and in the media was, when you look at it, gendered at its centre. All of that was more than what I was expecting.