‘I don't view myself as a woman politician, I view myself as a politician who's a woman’: the discursive management of gender identity in political leadership

Abstract

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard's speech in the Australian parliament on sexism and misogyny received considerable public attention and controversy. However, less attention has been paid to how Gillard attended and oriented to issues related to her status as a woman during the period between her elevation to the position of Prime Minister in June 2010 and the delivery of the misogyny speech in October 2012. Using a discursive psychological approach, this article examines a corpus of interview transcripts in which gender was occasioned both explicitly and implicitly by speakers, thus requiring Gillard to attend to her gender identity. The analysis demonstrates that far from making gender a salient and relevant membership category, Gillard worked strategically to mitigate her gender as merely inconsequential to her role as Prime Minister. These findings are discussed in relation to existing research examining how gender is oriented to, negotiated, and resisted in talk to accomplish social actions, and more specifically what may be at stake for women in leadership positions who explicitly orient to gender as an identity category.