Australia

In the lead up to the Federal Election on 7 September 2013, Australian Women Online will be profiling women from the major political parties in both houses of Federal Parliament.

As prime minister, Julia Gillard remained instinctively private, consistently contained and, for a figure so much in the public eye, oddly enigmatic.

Women in the Labor caucus have come under fire from the ‘sisterhood’ for siding with the men who brought down Julia Gillard. By comparison, the men who actually orchestrated the rise and fall of our first female Prime Minister, got off relatively easy.

Senator Penny Wong got the worst of it, with Coalition Senator Michaelia Cash, launching a scathing attack on the Finance Minister in the Senate this afternoon. Senator Cash captured the attention of the media when she accused Penny Wong of stabbing Julia Gillard in the back and betraying the sisterhood.

Julia Gillard speaks after Kevin Rudd won the Labor leadership ballot. Gillard, in a calm speech, thanks her supporters and constituents and announces, as promised, she will be leaving politics due to the defeat. She thanks colleagues for the opportunity 'not only to serve the nation but to serve as the first female prime minister of this country'.

Loud, crude, risky, seductive, personal and at times violent, Australia's "gender war" will go down as the legacy of the 2013 national elections, no matter the political outcome.

And one of the loudest battles recently, with about two months left before the elections, is between the country's female voters and is led by their standard-bearer, Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

The denigration of the first female Australian prime minister on the basis of her gender echoes that endured by the first female prime minister of Great Britain.

While Julia Gillard has suffered the juvenile attacks of men from the political right, Margaret Thatcher endured them from men and women on the political and academic left. Thatcher was ultimately toppled by men, exclusively, to the left of her. The point of origin of the attack on the spectrum was different in each case, but common to both was the use of gender to denigrate and delegitimize.

A political lobby group is pushing for a female candidate to replace long-term Labor MP Martin Ferguson when he steps down from politics in September.

The 59-year-old announced that he would not contest his safe inner-Melbourne seat of Batman at the upcoming election on Wednesday, prompting calls from Emily’s List, a group pushing for greater representation of women in parliament.

National co-convenor Tanja Kovac told Fairfax Media it was important to have a woman step up for the role, which has been held by Ferguson since 1996.

When she announced her new ministry last Monday, Julia Gillard made history. For the first time, women make up one-third of the Australian government. Although the cabinet remains unchanged, the promotion of three women into the ministry has radically altered the gender balance of the government.

There are four women, including Gillard, in the 20-member cabinet which in itself is a record (and the numbers were even better before the resignation of Nicola Roxon as attorney-general this year).

That much-publicised milestone of political gender equality in the US? 20 per cent. Yes. Being outnumbered four to one is a milestone for women in the US Senate. Closer to home, Australia granted women the right to vote and to seek election in 1902, but it took nearly 22 years for a woman to enter federal Parliament, and more than a century to have any woman as prime minister.

Today, less than one-third of our MPs are women and women make up less than a quarter of the cabinet. In the ''year of the woman'', men continue to dominate the policy decisions that affect us all.