Julia Gillard, former Australian PM and chair at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership: The backsliding of gender equality

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1:15Julia Gillard:Hello, I'm Lucy Hawkins, BBC News presenter, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. We have never seen a people so united. Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. We're more popular than populism. For this interview, I met Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia and Chair at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College, whilst in London for International Women's Day.

1:57Julia Gillard:Still the only woman to have held the premiership, you're going to hear about the misogyny she faced as Australian Prime Minister and how women in the public eye have an even harder time now because of online abuse. A champion of equality and breaking glass ceilings, Julia shares her view on why the scales seem to be tipping towards a more macho culture and what that means for women and men. We discussed new research that shows a growing number of young men think that women should obey their husbands and believe in traditional gender roles. And we'll ask, what are the factors that influence these attitudes?

2:34Lucy Hockings:There is the manosphere and increasingly a cultural zeitgeist that masculinity is about physical fitness, it's about the ability to project force, it's about dismissive attitudes, even misogynistic attitudes towards women. Early access to pornography, I think, is probably part of the mix. I think, too, that the generation of young men would be the generation that were in school when a lot of programs were coming through for the girls and people like me were creating those programs, girls and leadership, girls and science and all the rest of it. But maybe they looked at that and thought, why are they getting all of these things and we're missing out?

3:15Julia Gillard:So they felt left behind.

3:16Lucy Hockings:They felt left behind.

3:20Julia Gillard:Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Julia Gillard.

3:25Lucy Hockings:When I first saw this research, I was very confronted by it because as a progressive politician, I've always lived with the sense that every generation is a bit more progressive than the generation that went before. And one of the things that was going to combat gender inequality in our world was that sense of progress. and then to see in the research, actually, the younger generation is more conservative on these questions than people my age, that deeply troubled me and it continues to.

3:59Julia Gillard:One of the headline findings that a lot of people will pick up on is that a third of young men interviewed believe that a wife should always obey her husband. And one third also said a husband should have the final word on important decisions. And this is really different from their parents' generation. Why do you think we've seen such a generational shift? Why is there that disconnect?

4:23Lucy Hockings:I wish we had all of the answers. At the Global Institute for Women's Leadership, we would love to do a very deep evaluative project into the attitude formation of young men. We're working at the moment on intuition. But I think the intuition would lead you to a few conclusions. One, of course, there is the manosphere and increasingly a cultural zeitgeist that masculinity is about physical fitness. It's about the ability to project force. It's about dismissive attitudes, even misogynistic attitudes towards women. Early access to pornography, I think, is probably part of the mix. I think, too, that the generation of young men, Gen Z, to use the terminology, would be the generation that were in school when a lot of programs were coming through for the girls.

5:13Lucy Hockings:And people like me were creating those programs girls and leadership girls and science and all the rest of it. But maybe they looked at that and thought, why are they getting all of these things and we're missing out?

5:25Julia Gillard:So they felt left behind?

5:26Lucy Hockings:They felt left behind. I think the change that there has been in understandings about sexual consent, the Me Too movement, the shining a spotlight on issues of consent for some young men. I think that probably has also made them more tentative and anxious about relations with women. So I think all of that is in the mix. It's quite complicated. And then it is difficult to do the transition for any young person from teenage years to young adulthood. That's always been true. But the statistics tell us it is particularly true for young men today. It can be very hard to make that transition. And of the young people who are not in training, not in work, it is disproportionately young men now.

6:16Julia Gillard:You've raised a lot of issues there. So let's delve into some of them. I mean, do you feel like misogyny itself has actually changed? What we're seeing now is not sort of the sexism that we saw in the past, but with slightly better algorithms. There are actually different elements to it.

6:31Lucy Hockings:I think misogyny has always been with us. and I think it's been perhaps more expressed and less expressed. I think in my generation, the more that people came to understand gender inequality, the cultural predisposition of workplaces, of politics even, became more and more that you shouldn't show misogynistic behaviour, that there was a price to be paid. I'd like to think that I was one of the people who helped bring that change, but for others to judge. I think now with the online environment, there are plenty of ways of letting your inner misogynist out without paying any price. So it's partly that, but I also think it's partly new elements.

7:16Lucy Hockings:I mean, you know, men my age did not grow up with this kind of manosphere. Men my age did not grow up with the very early access to very violent pornography that young men have today.

7:27Julia Gillard:I mean, when you mention some of the sort of basics of feminism and gender equality to young men today, they almost roll their eyes. I mean, that's not resonating. Some of that messaging that we were raised with doesn't cut through anymore.

7:42Lucy Hockings:It doesn't. And I think as feminists, as activists, as someone who's been at this for literally decades, there is a sort of deep reflective piece here that the research is calling on us to do. When we look at the research across all age cohorts, it's different cohort to cohort, but we see substantial numbers of people say either gender equality in their country has gone too far or it's gone far enough. And this is a survey of almost 30 countries. So we're talking right around the world. Yet we know the statistics show it hasn't gone anywhere near far enough if we're looking at life outcomes for women, leadership outcomes for women and all the rest of it.

8:28Lucy Hockings:So what is explaining that disconnect?

8:31Julia Gillard:But it is also caught up in the sort of anti-wokeism. It's almost like feminism is now lumped in with being woke.

8:37Lucy Hockings:Absolutely. I think we've been talking about gender equality for a long time and a lot of people have heard all the noise and they think that it has resulted in lots of progress. So there's a difference between the noise and the progress, but they're hearing the noise. In terms of the self-reflective piece, I think we, and I lump myself in with this, we have allowed to settle an impression that more for women always means less for men, that this is a zero-sum game. Whereas actually the research clearly shows, my own life experiences show that when we rise, we rise together. A gender equal world would be a better world for men too, but that is not commonly believed.

9:20Lucy Hockings:And then I think there have been programs done in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion, which were ineffective, which were easily parodied, which were resented by the workforce that they were brought to. And figures like President Trump and others have channeled that into a political campaign against woke, against gender equality, against feminism.

9:45Julia Gillard:And is society in general failing to provide sort of role models of what, you know, equality looks like in a more sort of positive way from men and from women?

9:55Lucy Hockings:Yes, I think we haven't provided enough of a sense of what that world could look like. And when you just reflect on this data and you see amongst young men and young women, particularly young men, but also young women, there is more of a latch on to traditional gender norms and stereotypes. I think we need to remind those norms and stereotypes confine men too. A significant proportion of young men say to be a man, you've got to be physically strong. Well, there are lots of men who are not ripped, who are not in the gym every second day. That's not their body type. That's not who they are. And all of this clutching for traditional stereotypes is just going to make them feel bad.

10:40Lucy Hockings:There are young men who would, given every choice in the world, possibly say they want to go into the caring professions. They might want to be a nurse. They might want to be a childcare worker. They might want to be an aged care worker. But if traditional stereotypes settle, they will just be viewed as odd if they select those pathways. So, you know, opening up, taking the sort of gender stereotype bars down actually gives everyone more options, more choices.

11:06Julia Gillard:So why do you think it is that so many women are drawn to this trad wife trend? I mean, there are millions of followers on social media, this lifestyle that they promote around submission and the domestic life. They often dress up in 1950s kind of clothes. I mean, what is it about that that is so appealing for women?

11:24Lucy Hockings:It's kind of bemusing to me that anybody would think it was appealing to be in a 50s outfit with a full face of makeup at five in the morning milking the goat. You know, this is not my aspiration for myself. We actually did some research on this last year, and we found when we dug into it that young women who consume a lot of that trad wife content actually don't want to be trad wives. It's a fantasy, and it's a fantasy about having taken off your shoulders all of the difficulties that the world currently presents in navigating work and family life. So these young women have looked at older generations of women, you know, really work every hour in the day times 10 to manage a career, having children, home, all of it.

12:18Lucy Hockings:And they've just looked at it and gone, too hard. I'm not going to do that. And then there's this quite beguiling, you know, swan around in a pinny looking amazing and apparently raising the perfect kids with the perfect husband. So there's something relieving in that, but it's not that they actually want to wake up as a trad wife.

12:40Julia Gillard:One of the other bits of data that was interesting that I think people will latch on to is that Gen Z men are most likely to believe that women who have a successful career, there's a duality here, are attractive to men, 41 % agreeing with this statement compared to 27 % of baby boomers of both genders. This is a real renegotiation in a way of these sort of gender roles we have in society that successful women are very sexy, but I still want my wife to stay at home and obey me. I mean, I don't know how this adds up.

13:10Lucy Hockings:I don't think it does add up. No, it's a real duality. Yeah. So you're absolutely right. Young men are disproportionately saying success at work is sexy. And maybe there's a practical end to that too. People know, young people, it's very tough to make out your economic pathway, to maybe end up owning a home, to have the options that income brings you, including the options to have children without worrying about every cent, every pound, where that's going. But they want someone who is forging ahead at work, but apparently submissive at home. I mean, these women don't exist, I don't think.

13:49Julia Gillard:And are there regional and country-specific differences in some of this data that's worth pointing out?

13:55Lucy Hockings:Yes, there are differences. One of the things we always point to is the data in South Korea. And that is because South Korea is often the sort of one that is indicating where other countries might go next. It has one of the most gender divided cohort of young people in the world, where attitudes to gender equality are fundamentally different between young men and young women. And that then plays through in South Korea to fewer and fewer young women saying that they want to marry. And that actually has consequences in the real world. The birth rate, for example, in Seoul is at the lowest levels in human history seen outside the context of war or famine.

14:43Lucy Hockings:So these things are not academic in the sense of they're just what people say to a research survey, it actually affects behaviours in the real world.

14:52Julia Gillard:In terms of the manosphere, if we were sort of to delve into it and look at what's happening with education, with parenting, with society, and then the internet and what's happening online, how much of it do you think is being exacerbated simply by the amount of time that young people are spending online and those algorithms and social media?

15:14Lucy Hockings:I think a great deal. We've got a mainstream culture that is also sending a message to men and young boys that masculinity is about prowess, power, being big. And then we've got the manosphere subculture that is telling them all of that. I mean, the original Jordan Peterson, who's a manosphere influencer, claim to fame, was really about telling young men to get up, get out of bed, go and look after yourself, get physically fit, those kinds of things. But I think that has metastasised into a world where all of those things come with a big dose of misogyny and dismissal of women.

16:00Julia Gillard:And pornography? Julia, what role does that play? I mean, it's prolific. Younger and younger children are accessing it. It's sort of everywhere. What role does that play?

16:08Lucy Hockings:Oh, I think it's distorting sexual behaviours because young people seeing that think that violent pornography is actually what sex is about. And I think it's... Women are often submissive. Women are often submissive or physically hurt. And I think that is, you know, knitting in with the culture that says women are the, you know, secondary, disposable, there to be used, there to be judged entirely on looks. You know, obviously the kinds of images people would see of women in that kind of pornography are completely unrealistic. People don't look like that in real life. And so I think that's part of the cocktail.

16:54Julia Gillard:You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service. I met Julia Gillard in our studios at Broadcasting House in London. I've interviewed her a couple of times before, and we always bond over our Antipodean heritage. But it was hard to ignore the screens all around us, which were showing the events unfolding in the Middle East. And she talked about what it was like to be a leader on the world stage at a time of crisis. But we did quickly move on to something that all Australians and New Zealanders love to talk about as the seasons change? The weather over the summer. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Julia Gillard.

17:33Julia Gillard:Can I ask you about female leadership? Sure. It is tough to be a female politician at the moment, particularly if we look at the world of politics. And there's always been a tightrope, hasn't there, between being strong and showing empathy. Men don't have that pressure, do they?