Julia Gillard 2

Julia Gillard's ascension fulfils feminist dream | The Australian

JULIA Gillard's ascension to the highest office (under the Governor General, another woman) is the realisation of the great feminist dream.

It's precisely what our mothers - and Germaine! - hoped would one day happen, as they argued, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, for fundamental changes to the fabric of the nation.

It shouldn't matter who you are, or where you come from.

If you're capable, there ought to be no barriers.

Julia Gillard is a woman, but that's not the only extraordinary thing about her rise.

She's got a de facto.

Imagine that, 30 years ago: an unmarried woman, living in sin with a man. Who is a hairdresser. And aspiring to high office.

Forget about it.

That's how far we've come.

And there's more.

Julia Gillard has a house in Altona.

Altona is the heart of Melbourne's western suburbs. It's got smoke stacks and brick veneers with white concrete lions near the driveway.


It's the place people like to deride, for being land of the Bogan, and of the moccasin, the wrecking yard, and the abattoir.

Now they've given rise to a prime minister.

Walking from the partyroom yesterday, Ms Gillard said: “I feel very honoured.”

There will be sour pusses, who say: this is the work of Shorten, and Arbib and Albo, who think she's been installed, by the back room boys.

She wouldn't be there if she wasn't capable.

Plenty of women - married and single, with and without children, working or at home - sat in front of TV sets this morning, and watched this unfold with our daughters on our laps.

We texted each other, saying: “Woo-Hoo!” and “Yee-ha!”

Then, too, we looked back, toward the generation that made it possible, the women who fought through the late 1960s and early 1970s for the right to keep working when they got married or pregnant; who refused to get married, or if they did, refused to take their husband's name; who chose not to have children, or else to have children, without bothering to put on the white dress; who ditched the promise “to obey”; who argued with their husbands over who had to do the dishes, and vacuum the floor and pick up the children; who took mortgages in their own names, and voted for whom they pleased; and travelled solo; who battled their way into university courses, and soon were topping them.

They got called names - hairy feminists, ragged dykes, frigid moles, you name it - and it hurt, but they kept going.

They told us that we'd have a female prime minister one day. It would take time. It might take 30 or 40 years.

They were right, almost to the day.

If you do nothing else today, call your mother. Say thank you.