Prime Minister Gillard
June 24th, 2010 at 22:09
Sure, it didn’t start out as a pretty day in politics, but by lunchtime I was pretty delighted with the end result.
I love that we have an unmarried, unreligious Prime Minister. I love that our new Prime Minister is smart and confident and strong and has a real knack for calling people out when they say something stupid (believe me, with Abbott around that’s going to be handy)
But I love, love love that when it came to it, the best person for the job of coming in and picking up the post-Rudd pieces happened to be a woman. I love that my daughters will not now be growing up in a country that has never had a female prime minister – that they will not remember a time that this seemed impossible. The world, and Australia, look a bit different today.
I told 5 year old Raeli that we had a female Prime Minister this afternoon and she was totally uninterested. That in itself was pretty fabulous – she saw nothing exceptional about the concept (when I first explained what a PM was to her, a few months ago, she reckoned I should do the job, possibly because of my exceptional bossing skills). But later, when she saw Julia on the news, she said “That’s the Prime Minister!” and a few moments later, “I LOVE the Prime Minister.”
That’s my girl.
Kudos to Kevin Rudd for all the good things he’s done during his time as PM. He achieved far more than simply not being John Howard, which was pretty much the minimum many of us expected of him for the first six months. (ahh the lack of Howard, it never gets old) One of the things this voter will always remember him fondly for is that he chose a strong, competent woman as his deputy, and put her in the position that allowed history to be made today.
Our new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard (nope, not bored with saying that yet) has proved so far that she’s tough enough to take the kind of shit that gets doled out to women who dare to advance in Australian politics. Good luck to her in the months ahead.
(if the Labor party could just ditch Conroy and all he stands for now, that would make my week)
Tags: aussie politics, feminism, julia gillard, raeli
June 24th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
and that pic you chose shows the delegation of power from a female monarch through a female governor general to a female prime minister. in this hierarchical, patriarchal society of ours, that’s pretty damn cool!
June 25th, 2010 at 6:48 am
oh yes, I chose that pic deliberately
I love how much positive talk there was all day in the media about these two women being part of that history-changing moment. I’m sure there was a whole bunch of sexist wank on Facebook and the like, but it really felt for a while like EVERYONE was really happy for once to see women doing the job.
It was like a real live Bechdel Test!!!