ABSTRACT
In a blistering speech before Parliament in late 2012, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard fought back against the opposition leader Tony Abbot’s repeated use of blatant sexism to try to undermine her leadership (Little 2012). Noting his previous public comments that it might not be a bad thing that there were fewer women than men in leadership positions, and that women might be less adapted by temperament or physiology for command, his condescending references to the housewives of Australia, and his willingness to be photographed standing next to signs that labeled Gillard personally as a “witch” or a “man’s bitch,” Gillard asserted that, if the opposition leader wanted to “know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he … needs a mirror.”
