THE MEANING OF THE GENDER CARD

The argument that Gillard illicitly played the gender card has become a key critique that was made of her government by her conservative opponents, as the following quotation from Tony Abbott, the then Australian opposition leader and subsequent prime minister, demonstrates.

There are two key points to make here. It will be suggested later in this article that Gillard did indeed initially play down her gender, but that was because she wished to minimize the possibility of the gender card being played against her. Secondly, and even more importantly, Abbott identifies a woman drawing attention to her gender and claiming she has been subject to sexist and misogynist attacks as an example of playing the gender card. He implies that playing the gender card is a new development for Gillard and one that a woman is likely to resort to from a position of desperation (of weakness rather than strength).

Given Abbott's suggestion that the gender card is played by female politicians and Liberal MP Kelly O'Dwyer's claim that Gillard had initiated using gender as a “political weapon” for the first time in Australian politics (Alberici Reference Alberici2012), it is worth noting that there is actually a long history of the gender card being played in Australian politics, in which Tony Abbott himself is implicated. It is just that, partly because of women's underrepresentation in Australian politics, it has normally been played by men against men. This has rarely been identified as playing the gender card, though.Footnote ² As Michael Kimmel (Reference Kimmel2001) has pointed out, gender tends to be noticed only when a woman raises it—after all, masculinity is the unacknowledged and assumed universal, the norm in public life, so men are often not even constructed as gendered. Consequently, men using forms of masculinity against other men isn't commonly accepted as playing the gender card. Falk (Reference Falk2013, 200) identified five meanings of playing the gender card that had been used against various female politicians and noted that the last two were particularly used against Hillary Clinton:

1. 1. Drawing attention to your gender as a woman to make you stand out in a field of men

2. 2. Arguing that people should vote for a woman to remediate current underrepresentation

3. 3. Campaigning on issues that women are believed to support

4. 4. Arguing sexism plays a role in attacks against you or that you are the subject of sexist attack

5. 5. Mentioning the fact that women face discrimination in the public sphere

It will be suggested in this article that we should make a case for another key meaning, namely men mobilizing particular stereotypes of masculinity against other men—and against women—whether that is simply by mobilizing their own masculine image or by making derogatory comments about their opponents’ masculinity or femininity. Extending the meaning is important, not merely because it brings the other half of the gender equation, masculinity, into the equation but because it also helps to expose some of the ways in which accusations of “playing the gender card” can be used to try to shut down debate over discrimination against women in politics. Furthermore, although this article focuses on politicians themselves, rather than providing an analysis of media coverage of them, it should be noted that the media is also implicated in issues of playing the gender card, both in terms of media accusations regarding politicians playing the card (Falk Reference Falk2013) and in terms of media critiques of female politicians (Murray Reference Murray and Murray2010a) that so often focus on whether they are performing their gender correctly.

One reason why men playing the gender card can easily be overlooked is because, like the race card, the gender card is often something that is raised in implicit form and not explicitly spelled out. It is subtly designed to evoke ingrained gender assumptions. As Mendelberg (Reference Mendelberg2001, 4–8) has argued in her study of American uses of the race card, because making explicitly racist arguments is widely considered to be unacceptable, politicians playing the race card often use language that evokes a racialized response but never explicitly spells out what is being said. In other words, the race card is usually used via what Australians would call a dog whistle (in which subliminal targeted messages are sent to specific audiences, just as farm dogs rounding up sheep and cattle are directed by whistles, pitched so that only the dogs can hear). The use of implicit meanings, of subtexts, is also the most common way in which the gender card is played in Australian politics, including when the gender card has been played by men against other men. Although it is important to realize that “cards” can be played not only by members of dominant groups against subordinate groups, they can also be played within dominant groups by suggesting that politicians are not adequately exhibiting or performing the dominant identity. In terms of gender, men can suggest that their opponent's masculinity is inadequate in some sense, thereby shoring up their own. After all, as Connell (Reference Connell, Tomsen and Donaldson2003, 14) has pointed out, there are hierarchies of masculinity: “Different masculinities do not sit side by side like dishes on a smorgasbord. There are definite social relations between them. Especially there are relations of hierarchy, for some masculinities are dominant while others are marginalized or discredited.”

Tony Abbott came to the opposition leadership while Gillard's Labor predecessor, Kevin Rudd, was still prime minister. Abbott quickly moved to use his own particular model of masculinity against Rudd. Abbott cultivates a hypermasculine image as a former boxer and rugby player who remains a fit cyclist, volunteer lifeguard, and community firefighter. Consequently, Abbott portrayed an image of an action man who got things done while depicting Rudd as a wordy nerd who was “all talk and no action” (Abbott Reference Abbott2010). Abbott was playing the masculinity gender card by suggesting that he was a real man while Rudd was weak and ineffectual. Rudd (Reference Rudd2013) apparently recognized the effectiveness of Abbott's attack on his masculinity given his subsequent attempts when he replaced Gillard and returned to the prime ministership to turn the tables on Abbott by casting him as the former boxer too scared to debate a nerd on issues such as government debt. As Rudd put it in a media interview, “It's time we have a properly moderated debate. … Mr. Abbott, I think it's time you demonstrated to the country you had a bit of ticker on this. I mean, he's the boxing blue; I'm the glasses-wearing kid in the library” (Rudd Reference Rudd2013). Nonetheless, the attacks on Rudd's masculinity continued. Abbott's Liberals (Australia's conservative party) continued to depict Rudd as “all talk” (Liberal Party 2013b). Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey expressed his belief that voters would see through “the celebrity factor of Kevin Rudd and see that there is in fact no substance given that Australians don't want Kevin Kardashian as Prime Minister” (Kenny Reference Kenny2013; Metherell Reference Metherell2013). Being explicitly likened to one of the female Kardashians by Hockey makes the aspersions on Rudd's masculinity particularly clear. Abbott (Reference Abbott2013b) also questioned Rudd's masculinity by urging him to “be man enough to admit that you got it wrong” on asylum seeker policy.

While this article focuses on Abbott in the context of the Gillard years, it should be noted that he is part of a long history of Australian male politicians who have played the masculinity gender card (see further, Johnson Reference Johnson1993 and Johnson Reference Johnson2007, 7, 78–79, 86–87). Rudd himself had portrayed an image of contemporary masculinity, especially by being married to a highly successful businesswoman, to challenge the older and more socially conservative Liberal Prime Minister John Howard. Howard had portrayed an image of being a decisive, strong, grandfatherly protector, whom George W. Bush described as a “man of steel” (Davies Reference Davies2009). Howard's Liberals had critiqued the previous Labor leader, Kim Beazley, for being not man enough to protect Australia from asylum-seeker boats and terrorists—as being “flip-flop” Beazley, who lacked “ticker” (Howard Reference Howard2005, 75; Reith Reference Reith2001).

The above examples demonstrate that the performance of masculinity (Butler Reference Butler1990) is an important part of male politicians’ image that is used for electoral advantage (Messner Reference Messner2007), although this is an issue that has been somewhat neglected in much existing literature on masculinity (see Johnson Reference Johnson2013, 15). While the examples given here are from Australia, similar examples of male politicians playing the gender card can be given from other countries. For example, both David Cameron in the U.K. and Barack Obama in the U.S. have attempted to use versions of a “softer” new empathetic masculinity against their opponents while George W. Bush tended to portray a more traditional conception of the strong masculine leader (see further, Cooper Reference Cooper2009, Johnson Reference Johnson2013, and Messner Reference Messner2007). Indeed Katz (Reference Katz2013, 1) has argued that U.S. “presidential politics are the site of an ongoing cultural struggle over the meaning of American manhood.” Male politicians can be targeted for not performing their masculinity correctly. Nonetheless, being an effective politician and leader (e.g., strong, assertive) affirms a male politician's masculinity (Katz Reference Katz2013, 3). By contrast, being a strong and assertive leader risks undermining a female politician's femininity among voters with more traditional attitudes, due to different gender expectations and stereotypes (Johnson Reference Johnson2013; Lawless and Fox Reference Lawless and Fox2010, 9–12, 27; Messner Reference Messner2007, 466). There is an issue about how well political leaders perform their masculinity, but there are no inherent tensions between being a leader and being masculine, as leadership is coded masculine.

ABBOTT‘S PLAYING OF THE GENDER CARD AGAINST GILLARD

Abbott had initially played the gender card against Kevin Rudd by using his own hypermasculine action man image. However, that posed the issue of how Abbott's hypermasculinity would work against a female opponent when Julia Gillard deposed Kevin Rudd in 2010 and became leader? Abbott responded to Gillard's ascension by recalibrating his performance of masculinity. He softened his image and emphasized his status as a family man. He was repeatedly photographed with his wife and daughters. He declared that he had changed his views on women's issues, for example, to now support a generous parental leave scheme (Horin Reference Horin2010). He began playing the gender card in another way, using his own image as a family man to repeatedly imply that the fact Gillard was unmarried (albeit living in a de facto relationship) and didn't have children meant that she couldn't empathize with ordinary Australians. He emphasized that “my wife, Margie, and I know what it's like to raise a family, to wrestle with a big mortgage, with grocery bills and school fees” (Abbott and Gillard Reference Abbott and Gillard2010). Abbott was performing a form of “protective masculinity,” an image that revolves around a male model of the responsible, caring, protective father who plays the key role in providing for families (see further, Johnson Reference Johnson2013). As Tony Abbott's daughter Frances stated at the Liberal Party campaign launch, after praising his fatherly support, “My Dad looks out for everyone and I know he will look out for you” (Nine MSN News 2013).

Notoriously, Abbott also alluded to Gillard's unmarried state in his assertion: “I think if the Prime Minister wants to make, politically speaking, an honest woman of herself, she needs to seek a mandate for a carbon tax and she should do that at the next election” (cited in Farr Reference Farr2011). He also referred to the Labor government's carbon price as “the mother of all taxes” (cited in Farr Reference Farr2011) as though Gillard had perversely given birth to a tax, not a child. Meanwhile, the repeated images of action man Abbott performing in hard hat and fluorescent safety vest, driving trucks and forklifts and inspecting factories were designed to suggest that he was more in touch with a blue collar male constituency than Gillard was. In other words, Abbott repeatedly used the gender card against Gillard in a way identified earlier, namely using implicit subtexts rather than spelling things out. His own performances of fatherly “protective” masculinity were as implicated in that playing of the gender card as were the gendered subtexts in his comments about Gillard. Abbott's use of the gender card was just more subtle than when Gillard was targeted in the past by Liberal politicians for being “deliberately barren” (cited in Harrison Reference Harrison2007) or for being “one dimensional” and unable to understand how parents think (Maiden Reference Maiden2010).

THE BACKGROUND: GILLARD‘S INITIAL ATTEMPTS TO NEUTRALIZE THE GENDER CARD

Gillard was well aware that her gender could be used against her. Several years before she became a prime minister herself, Gillard (Reference Gillard2005a) noted that New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark had been constructed as “bossy,” where a man would have been constructed as authoritative; that her opponents “cast her as the head of ‘lesbians, husbandless women and feminist extremists.’” Gillard noted that Clark had “walked out of a media interview in Australia when asked about her childlessness” and added that this “sounds familiar” (Gillard Reference Gillard2005b; see further, Trimble and Treiberg Reference Trimble, Natasia and Murray2010). Gillard had also commented on the gendered treatment of prominent female Australian politicians (Baird Reference Baird2004, 241), such as Carmen Lawrence (state premier of Western Australia), Joan Kirner (state premier of Victoria), Cheryl Kernot (leader of the minor party, the Australian Democrats), and Natasha Stott Despoja (another leader of the Australian Democrats).

Gillard's tendency to downplay gender in her early period in office seems to have been precisely because she was well aware of how the gender card could be used against a female political leader. On her first day in office, she acknowledged that she was both the first woman prime minister and possibly the first redhead but “can I say to you I didn't set out to crash my head on any glass ceilings” (Gillard in Gillard and Swan Reference Gillard and Swan2010). Much later, in an interview just before she lost office, she stated that she initially hadn't wanted to “hark on” about being a woman given it was “obvious.” She just wanted it to be about “doing it rather than talking about it” (Gillard in Summers Reference Summers2013a). Long before she became prime minister, Gillard expressed her frustration that, in effect, issues of how female politicians performed their gender were still being privileged over how well they performed their jobs.

Consequently, Gillard's prime ministership saw her having to walk a very careful path in how she performed her gender, trying to neutralize the gender card being used against her. She was well aware that the time she hoped for, of gender being an “irrelevancy” (Gillard Reference Gillard2005a), hadn't arrived yet.

One consequence of not being “a man in a suit” was the need to pay constant attention to what she was wearing in an attempt to forestall it being an issue that could be raised against her: “I spend a lot of time having to worry about what I'm wearing so no-one comments on it. It's a complete reverse of how most women think about their wardrobe” (Hadfield Reference Hadfield2013; see further, Goodall Reference Goodall2013, 31–41). Other prominent female politicians internationally, from Hillary Clinton in the U.S. to female leaders such as Tarja Halonen in Finland and Angela Merkel in Germany, have also faced excessive scrutiny of their clothes and appearance (Murray Reference Murray and Murray2010a, 12–13; Van Zoonen Reference Van Zoonen2006, 297).Footnote ³ When Abbott was being criticized for wearing his “speedos” (particularly skimpy swimming briefs), he was being criticized for not wearing a suit. Unlike Gillard, he was not being criticized for not being male. Indeed, there was the implicit suggestion that one of the problems with Abbott's swimwear is that he appears to be well endowed. He has a simple uniform to wear as an acceptable leader: ”dark suit, white shirt, blue tie is kind of my uniform and I figure if I look more or less the same every day, people won't be distracted by my appearance and they will listen to what I have to say” (Abbott Reference Abbott2013a). Male leaders do indeed have a simple and plain “uniform” that women don't (see Goodall Reference Goodall2013). It is part of the way in which leadership is coded as male while women's clothes are problematized along with their femininity.

As well as negotiating issues of clothing, Gillard was also put on notice that she had to negotiate issues of personality that were also gendered, with one journalist asking whether she was going to change her “innate style of holding back a fair bit.” Gillard responded by explicitly challenging the gender politics involved in such criticisms of how she performed the job of prime minister:

Gillard's point about the different ways of judging male and female leaders in Australia is an important one. Once again, other prominent female politicians internationally, including Clark in New Zealand, Merkel in Germany, Halonen in Finland, and Clinton in the U.S. have also been criticized for being too cold and distant (Trimble and Treiberg Reference Trimble, Natasia and Murray2010, 125–26; Van Zoonen Reference Van Zoonen2006, 298–99).

Nonetheless, Labor strategists should perhaps have thought in more depth about the constant repetition of the message that Gillard was “tough” both by herself (as above) and by others, including Treasurer Wayne Swan who praised her for being “tough as nails” (ABC News 2011). Gillard's “tough” image, posed particular gendered difficulties for her. She had the common dilemma that female politicians face of trying to walk the tightrope when performing their femininity of appearing to be either not too aggressive or too weak, too tough or too lacking in warmth, empathy, and compassion. Trying to get the balance right is a particular challenge for female political candidates (see further, Johnson Reference Johnson2013 and Messner Reference Messner2007, 466). In addition, repeatedly emphasizing Gillard's toughness and resilience made it harder for her to appeal to paternalistic forms of protective masculinity that disapprove of women being picked on. The issue of managing toughness versus compassion is a longstanding one for female politicians. For example, Gidengil's and Everitt's Canadian research on media coverage of female leaders suggests that women tend to be depicted as being more aggressive than male politicians anyway. They argue that this is partly because of framing that sees politics as a game men play, so men playing tough are just being the norm, but when women play tough, they are seen as unfeminine (Gidengil and Everitt Reference Gidengil and Everitt2003a, Reference Gidengil and Everitt2003b). At the same time, other female candidates for leadership have been discredited for not being tough enough and then pilloried for being too tough when they try to address that criticism—for example, Ségolène Royal in France (Murray Reference Murray and Murray2010b, 54, 62).

However, Gillard faced even greater issues in this regard because she came to power as prime minister by removing Kevin Rudd as Labor leader in an innerparty coup. (Australian prime ministers are chosen via the winning party's leadership decisions, rather than being directly elected by voters.) While removing a first-term prime minister is unusual, it is hardly unusual for male political leaders to make it into office by removing their predecessors. Nonetheless, the Liberals became masters at implying that Gillard's ascension to the Labor leadership was done in a way that was unusually bloodthirsty for a woman—and that she was a devious and untrustworthy female (Pyne Reference Pyne2012). In the words of a prominent Liberal, “Comparing her to Lady Macbeth is unfair on Lady Macbeth—she only had one victim to her name; this Prime Minister has a list of victims longer than Richard III” (Pyne Reference Pyne2012). Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth may have famously asked the spirits to “unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty” (Macbeth Act1, scene5), but Christopher Pyne is also literally unsexing Julia Gillard by comparing her to Richard III (who was depicted in a particularly cruel light by Shakespeare). The repeated questioning of Gillard's legitimacy as a prime minister also worked as a subtext regarding the legitimacy of having a woman in the role of prime minister at all. There are genuine questions that can be asked about both the justification for and timing of Rudd's removal. However, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991–1996) did not receive the same level of personal opprobrium for successfully challenging then Prime Minister Bob Hawke and neither did Tony Abbott for successfully challenging his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull for the position of opposition leader. Women, however, are apparently not meant to behave in this way, and this was also reflected in much media coverage, which depicted such behavior as a deeply transgressive performance of femininity (Hall and Donaghue Reference Hall and Donaghue2013; Trimble Reference Trimble2014).Footnote ⁴

DEMONIZING GILLARD

The popular demonization of Gillard took various forms, only some of which will be mentioned here given that they have been well documented elsewhere and the main focus of this article is on how conservative politicians were willing to exploit such feelings when playing the gender card. The forms of demonization included “Ditch the Witch” and “Bob Brown's Bitch” signs held aloft at anti-carbon-tax rallies—Brown was leader of the Greens, a party Gillard made a pact with to support her minority government. (Tony Abbott claimed not to have known he was standing in front of these signs). They also included a Julia Droolia dog chew toy (which featured particularly large breasts and buttocks) and talkback radio shock-jock Alan Jones's comment that “women are destroying the joint,” following on his previous comments that the prime minister should be put in a “chaff” bag and dumped out at sea (Farr Reference Farr2012a; see further, Goldsworthy Reference Goldsworthy2013b, 5–19; Johnson Reference Johnson2013, 19–24; Sawer Reference Sawer2013, 111–14, and Summers Reference Summers2013b, 104–36). The demonization of Gillard was particularly obvious online, as Summers noted, and included various semipornographic images in which her head was transposed on naked female bodies, “sack the crack” slogans, cartoonist's Larry Pickering's notorious depictions of her with a large penis-shaped dildo, and other examples that are not appropriate to refer to here (see Summers Reference Summers2012).

Such images suggest that Gillard was deeply troubling to the traditional gender order. Her actions, and the highly transgressive performance of femininity that they involved, seem to have unleashed deep anxieties among some sections of the electorate. They exacerbated a tendency that has been noted in online constructions of high-profile female politicians internationally. As Ritchie (Reference Ritchie2013, 103) points out in her article “Creating a Monster” on online media constructions of Hillary Clinton:

Gillard's “knifing” of Rudd made it all the easier for such anxieties to be provoked, not least regarding a female prime minister who was unmarried and didn't have children. After all, Hillary Clinton was married—to an ex-president no less—and being related to a powerful male political figure has often been an acceptable path for women to get into politics. Clinton stood by her man when he misbehaved sexually, and she has a child. So Gillard was potentially far more threatening to socially conservative men who felt threatened by gender changes (as well as to socially conservative women).

Occasionally some of the more bizarre material on the internet that suggested Gillard was troubling the gender order would surface in the mainstream media. For example, Gillard was asked on radio about rumors that her de facto relationship with Tim Mathieson was a fake one, with the implication being that both Gillard and Mathieson were actually gay (Weber Reference Weber2013). Interestingly, Helen Clark, Hillary Clinton, and Tarja Halonen also faced accusations that they were lesbians. However, Gillard didn't just become a repository of anxieties about gender uncertainty. One suspects from the level of vitriol unleashed that she was also a repository for more general feelings of resentment (Hoggett, Wilkinson, and Beedell Reference Hoggett, Wilkinson and Beedell2013, 1, 19) in which her challenges to the traditional gender order also triggered a broader sense of grievance and impotence around the loss of traditional certainties and identities in the face of social change (Crociani-Windland and Hoggett Reference Crociani-Windland and Hoggett2012, 165–67). Arguably this helps to explain what one of Australia's leading psephologists, Antony Green, has termed Gillard's “bloke problem”—a reduced vote from men that has also been identified in other polls and election surveys (Bean and McAllister n.d.; Green Reference Green2013; Manning Reference Manning2013).

Advertisements such as “The Headless Chooks in ‘The Gillard Experiment’” video clip released by the Liberal party in the final weeks of Gillard's prime ministership played on such feelings and the anger that goes with them. The video clip depicts various Labor politicians as chickens running around with severed heads, while a large ax can be seen in the foreground. The video culminates in a chicken representing former Labor Minister Simon Crean (who tried to facilitate a premature, subsequently aborted leadership challenge between Gillard and Rudd) being depicted as a suicide bomber blowing himself up with sticks of dynamite—less than three weeks after the Boston Marathon bombing (Liberal Party 2013a). One reason why the gender card is so effective when played by conservative politicians is that it can evoke often inchoate and inexplicit anxieties and anger that exist in a time of fear, uncertainty, and rapid social change (including in gender roles).

THE “MISOGYNY SPEECH” AND ACCUSATIONS THAT GILLARD WAS PLAYING THE GENDER CARD

So, the previous analysis poses an interesting question. Given that Abbott had played the gender card since he first became leader, firstly using his masculinity against Rudd's masculinity and subsequently mobilizing gender stereotypes against Gillard; given that Gillard had tried to behave so carefully as prime minister to try to minimize the gender card being used against her; given that she had nonetheless been subject to vitriolic gendered attacks—why was Gillard the one who was accused of starting a gender war by playing the gender card?

Let's return to Tony Abbott's statement that was cited in full earlier in this article, where, in answer to the question, how does one play the gender card, Abbott responded by saying, “A female accusing a male opponent of sexism and misogyny is playing the gender card” and suggested Gillard was playing it out of desperation (Madison 2013). This is a classic meaning of playing the gender card that Erika Falk identified, namely that a woman accusing a man of sexism is playing the gender card and, by doing so, is both desperate and seeking an unfair feminine advantage. Furthermore, Abbott's comments were part of a general strategy to diffuse accusations of sexist attitudes toward women. Liberal MP Kelly O'Dwyer had previously defended Abbott from attacks by Labor criticisms of his attitudes toward women by suggesting that “what we're seeing for the very first time in Australian political history is gender being used as a political weapon” (Alberici Reference Alberici2012). Given that Gillard's speech accusing Abbott of “misogyny” was seen as a defining incident in the gender wars, it is worth considering it in more detail.

While Gillard was initially cautious about drawing attention to gender issues, she later adopted a position of challenging the gender discrimination she encountered. The high point of such critiques was her so-called “misogyny speech.” A literal translation from the ancient Greek would suggest misogyny involves a pathological hatred of women. However, the editor of The Macquarie Dictionary (the key Australian dictionary) argues that its meaning has shifted in contemporary usage to mean “an entrenched prejudice against women” and particularly strong forms of sexist attitudes (ABC News 2012). Gillard's use of the word misogyny didn't come out of the blue: Gillard (Reference Gillard2012c) had used the term previously in August 2012 when criticizing the derogatory abuse that she was subject to by “the misogynists and the nut jobs on the Internet.” Opposition politicians such as Tony Abbott (Reference Abbott2012) and George Brandis (Herald Sun Reference Herald2012) had then picked up on that usage of the term to suggest that MP Peter Slipper was a “misogynist” and that Gillard was being hypocritical in refusing to remove him from the position of parliamentary speaker after texts he had sent (before becoming speaker) making derogatory comments about the appearance of female genitalia became public (Farr Reference Farr2012b). So, Gillard was responding to what she saw as the hypocrisy of the argument by Tony Abbott that Peter Slipper should be sacked for his sexism and misogyny. In the process, although the media tended to neglect mentioning it (e.g., Kelly Reference Kelly2012), Gillard did critique Peter Slipper's sexist and “anti-women” statements in her speech. However, Gillard is best remembered for her eloquent denouncing of Tony Abbott, in which she retaliated by using Abbott's own performance of conservative, sexist masculinity against him. In that respect, Gillard was indeed prepared to use the gender card as a weapon herself.

Gillard then went on to mention incidents from Abbott's own behavior toward her, as well as citing some of Abbott's past remarks about gender issues. The latter included comments he made in 1998, while a minister in the Howard government, questioning whether female underrepresentation mattered and whether women were less suited to leadership positions than men (Gillard Reference Gillard2012a).

Gillard's speech was an extraordinarily strong and important statement and one of many cited in this article in which she was consciously drawing attention to, and fighting against, sexism. It received considerable attention both in Australia and overseas, was praised by many supporters, and had had more than two million viewers on YouTube within ten days of it being given (Sawer Reference Sawer2013, 114). The misogyny speech was only one of the many key statements Gillard made against sexism, many of which have been cited here. Gillard also made a speech, often referred to as the “blue tie” speech, referring to Abbott's (Reference Abbott2013a) acknowledged “uniform,” in which she argued that “we are going to make a big decision as a nation. It's a decision about whether, once again, we will banish women's voices from our political life.” She asked listeners to imagine:

A prime minister—a man in a blue tie—who goes on holidays to be replaced by a man in a blue tie. A treasurer, who delivers a budget wearing a blue tie, to be supported by a finance minister—another man in a blue tie. Women once again banished from the centre of Australia's political life (Gillard Reference Gillard2013c).

At the time, Gillard's speech was ridiculed by the conservative press (see, e.g., Godfrey Reference Godfrey2013). However, given that Abbott only appointed one woman to his first Cabinet (as foreign minister), while even Gillard's male Labor successor Kevin Rudd had six, Gillard was arguably correct to draw attention to the marginalization of women in an Abbott government. Similarly, Gillard was criticized for raising Abbott's past position on abortion in the speech with suggestions that that was purely a scare campaign, but Abbott had attempted to reduce the number of abortions by various backdoor methods when he'd been health minister in the Howard Liberal government (see Gleeson Reference Gleeson2012).

I'd suggest that the reaction by opponents to the “misogyny” speech, along with the “blue tie” speech, has been so strong for a number of reasons. Abbott was undoubtedly offended by accusations of misogyny, which he interpreted as involving a pathological hatred of women. Furthermore, the misogyny speech questioned his crucial model of protective masculinity—suggesting he was dangerous for women—rather than depicting him as a strong male who would protect women. However, in order to understand the broader opposition, one also needs to look at the misogyny speech's wider significance. Then Labor Finance Minister Penny Wong (Reference Wong and Caro2013, 257–63) argues that the speech was “a marker of change” with huge symbolic value. The problem Gillard faced is that the misogyny speech was a marker of change and had huge symbolic value not only for those men and women who support gender equality and who lauded the speech, but also for those who were, consciously or unconsciously, troubled by it. In her analysis of playing the race card, Mendelberg (Reference Mendelberg2001, 4) has suggested that making the race card explicit undermines it: “When an implicit appeal is rendered explicit—when other elites bring the racial meaning of the appeal to voters’ attention—it appears to violate the norm of racial equality. It then loses its ability to prime white voters’ racial predispositions.” Or, as Mendelberg (Reference Mendelberg2001, 10) also put it: “What makes implicit appeals distinctively effective is also their Achilles’ heel. To counter an implicit appeal one can render it explicit.”

However, Gillard has suggested that explicit racism is treated more seriously than explicit sexism:

Furthermore, Gillard was not a member of the “elite” in gender terms, to refer back to Mendelberg's argument; she was a member of the socially subordinate group. She was not a man casting aspersions on another man's performance of masculinity but was a woman suggesting that a male opponent was exhibiting a form of masculinity that involved subordinating women. Gillard's accusation of sexism and misogyny was therefore outside of the rules of the game that male politicians play about masculinity with each other. Accusing a man of sexism and misogyny was constructed as unfair and unforgiveable by conservative opponents. After all, aggressively calling men to account is not an acceptable performance of femininity. The role of good girls is not to challenge men but to make men feel good about themselves—not to humiliate them and try to force them to face up to uncomfortable truths about their discriminatory social attitudes. Good girls are expected to turn the other cheek. Theorists such as Lakoff and Johnson and Edelman “have argued that metaphors can help society to highlight what it wants to believe and avoid what it does not wish to face” (cited in Falk Reference Falk2013, 194). As Falk (Reference Falk2013, 194) points out, the gender card is one such metaphor in that it helps social conservatives to dismiss accusations of sexism. So, too, did Abbott's related accusation that Gillard was playing the “victim card”—an accusation that Gillard responded to by saying that “I think it is actually a manifestation of deep sexism that you would say that if a woman raises her voice then that is her playing the victim as opposed to her standing up for her rights” (cited in Taylor Reference Taylor2012).

Overall, it is an immensely powerful moment to have a prime minister stand up and say she has been discriminated against. It was particularly significant in the post-Howard era. One of the effects of former Prime Minister Howard's conservative discourse asserting that the Australian mainstream had been disadvantaged by politically correct special interests was to make it very hard for Australians from marginalized groups to raise issues about discrimination and challenge the discriminatory practices of powerful groups. Such accusations were inevitably dismissed as “political correctness” and an example of “special interest” groups trying to empower and enrich themselves at the expense of “mainstream” Australians in arguments that drew on U.S. debates (see Johnson Reference Johnson2007, 39–72). However, Mendelberg's comments above regarding the positive effects of naming discriminatory attitudes hadn't adequately allowed for the sleight of hand in such discourse whereby the oppressor becomes the oppressed and the advantaged becomes the disadvantaged. Martha Augoustinos and Danielle Every have made a general point about this in regard to race. Their analysis indicates how social conservatives in many countries, including the United States, have responded to attempts to make the playing of race cards explicit in ways that Mendelberg hadn't adequately allowed for in her statements above.

Augoustinos has suggested that a similar phenomenon has occurred in the case of gender in respect to Gillard.Footnote ⁶ Similarly, former Attorney General Nicola Roxon argued that Liberal MP Kelly O'Dwyer's dismissal of a so-called “handbag hit squad” of female Labor ministers critical of Abbott's sexism was an attempt to suggest it was illegitimate to discuss sexism in politics, including the sexist behavior that Roxon claimed to have experienced from Tony Abbott herself (Alberici Reference Alberici2012; Cassidy Reference Cassidy2012).

Somewhat poignantly, Gillard was vulnerable to some of the very Howard-era arguments that she had previously analyzed. Gillard (Reference Gillard2006) had identified the racial nature of Howard's culture wars in which she argued that Tony Abbott had been a key henchman (Gillard Reference Gillard2003, 100). She argued that “John Howard hankers for the mono-cultural world he remembers of white picket fences shielding white families. … he is smart enough to understand the political potency of this image, this stylized representation of security and simplicity, for change weary, anxious Australians” (Gillard Reference Gillard2006). In her own tougher policies on asylum seekers and dog-whistling over population increases and foreign worker visas she had tried to address the anxiety over race by pandering to it. However, what Gillard had perhaps underestimated was that behind the white picket fence also lived a married heterosexual nuclear family, in which women were playing more traditional gender roles. Gillard could attempt to neutralize issues of race (however controversially), but she couldn't expunge the challenge that her own persona as Australia's first female prime minister posed to traditional gender relations. By contrast, it proved easier for Abbott to continue remaking his own image on gender issues, appearing in interviews designed to be women-friendly and even (thanks to his lesbian sister Christine) relatively gay-friendly (Hayes Reference Hayes2013; Madison 2013, 48–50). Gleeson (Reference Gleeson2013) has written about her own experience of one of these media events, including Abbott's attempts to rewrite his own history on abortion issues. When he tried to appeal to women, Abbott is himself playing the gender card, but by attempting to strengthen his image of protective masculinity as a loving father, husband, and brother figure who can be trusted to look after Australians. In doing so, Abbott is reaffirming a version of the existing gender order. By contrast, when Gillard raises issues of gender equity, Gillard is challenging the gender order.

In 2007, Gillard had become acting prime minister for the first time while then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was overseas. She said at the time, “I think if there's one girl who looks at the TV screen over the next few days and says ‘I might like to do that in the future,’ well that's a good thing” (cited in O'Malley Reference O'Malley2007). By 2013 Tanya Plibersek, a senior feminist minister in the Gillard government who had observed the way the prime minister had been treated, had a very different perspective. As interviewer Anna Goldsworthy (Reference Goldsworthy2013a, 12) explained,

Gillard (Reference Gillard2013a) herself has noted that “smashing through a glass ceiling is a dangerous pursuit. It is hard not to get lacerated on the way through” but nonetheless urges other women to pursue political careers and suggests (or perhaps hopes) that it will be better for her successors than it was for her.