Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister, started her political career in college, where she served as the president of her student union. She later worked as a lawyer, and joined the Australian parliament in 1988. As a politician she is known to put an emphasis on consensus-building and negotiating, and has gained a reputation for persistence and determination, reports the BBC.
However Ms. Gillard, who became prime minister in 2010, has had a rough couple of years in office. In 2010 she deposed her one-time political ally Kevin Rudd in the midst of his plummeting opinion ratings to take the helm as prime minister. However, in early 2012, voter support for Gillard took a turn, sharply decreasing after unpopular policies such as a tax on carbon emissions, and Mr. Rudd challenged her to reclaim Australia’s highest political position.
The fight for prime minister has presented Australia, and Gillard, with a dramatic leadership battle, reports the Monitor. In late February 2012 Gillard maintained her position a prime minister winning 71 votes to Mr. Rudd’s 31 in the Labor Party’s leadership election, however analysts believe she will not be successful in the next election set to take place in late 2013.
Sexism may be playing a role in Gillard’s struggle to retain her position, some say. Simon Benson, the chief political correspondent of a Sydney newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, wrote that the criticism toward Gillard spurred from “a belief that the harder and more personal the attack, the more likely she is to break – because she is a woman,” reports the Monitor.
Despite her tenuous status as prime minister and challenges she has faced, the reported sexism Gillard is confronting as Australia’s most senior politician could help pave the way for future female leaders worldwide.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
