Australia

In the fourth of our series on Women in Politics, we speak to Leader of the Greens, Senator Christine Milne.

Can you name the politician with the most influence over the lives of women and their families in the past five years? Few would probably come up with Jenny Macklin, the low profile but highly prolific Minister for Families in the Federal Labor government since 2007.

Continuing our series on women in federal politics, we meet the Hon Kate Ellis MP (ALP), Federal Member for Adelaide, Minister for Early Childhood, Childcare and Youth, Minister for Employment Participation

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.

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.

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.

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.