Language, gender, and the discursive production of women as leaders

This chapter discusses the discursive construction of Australia’s first (and so far, only) female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. The chapter demonstrates how intertwined discourses that circulated in the media and the political domain constructed Gillard as a particular type of gendered and sexualised person. First, Gillard was faced with the challenges of a gendered ‘double bind’, by which female leaders are expected to demonstrate qualities stereotypically associated with masculinity, and at the same time to display qualities stereotypically associated with femininity. Second, Gillard faced sexualised abuse in politics and the media which worked to represent her as an ‘unintelligible being’. Third, in acts of strategic essentialism, Gillard condemned the misogyny she endured, repositioning herself as a coherent political force and marking the re-emergence of feminism in Australian politics