The Other School of Economics

Yes Gillard’s tirade against sexism is a load of politics, but also an unintended atonement (a foreigner’s take)

Of course Julia Gillard’s impassionate tirade against Tony Abbott’s sexism was political point scoring. However the unpredictable way the video went viral abroad means that it can genuinely be enjoyed in isolation from the Australian context.

Of course blogger @Get_Shortened is right when dismissing this as “just a load of politics“. That “If the woman who holds the highest office in this country won’t or feels she can’t speak out against the extreme sexism directed at her until nearly 2 years into her tenure and only when it’s related to the credibility of a parliamentary motion against the Speaker, how can other less powerful women do the same and with confidence?”

Of course blogger @Piping_Shrike is right objecting that this does not resolve sexism’s social impact. “That despite the fabulousness of having a female Governor-general, Prime Minster and now Speaker, there is still a gender pay gap of around 17% that has barely moved in 20 years.” You just have to look at this OECD chart showing a stunning drop in female participation leaving us well behind all other comparable countries. Now THAT is something to make us scream of shame: and Australian women are more vulnerable because of this drop than because of Tony Abbott’s alleged sexism – … unless he becomes PM and actively starts to push conservative policies accentuating it…

Even more ironic is the timing of this episode that happened on the very day Gillard’s government passed legislation that removed welfare payments to 100,000 single parents, mostly mothers, when their youngest child turns eight. Making Welfare groups furious it was done despite two parliamentary inquiries recommending it be delayed until the outcome of a study into the adequacy of the allowance is finalised. Speaking about social policy priorities…

Of course journalist George Megalogenis is right when he says there are no votes in this. Or rather there are no swing votes in this; as Labor faithfuls will probably overstate the impact of the stand Gillard took by standing up, whilst Liberals will overplay how she undermined her authority as PM by making it personal. And in the end, come election time, swing voters would have moved on to the next populist attempt to woe them.

However since this kind of politics is a cynic’s game, and since it is not going away, cynics about this cynicism could argue that we may as well make the most of it and appreciate when it works in the favour of a genuine cause: namely here, the ongoing struggle against misogyny.

Indeed, despite the justified caution commended by the Australian murky political context, the very fact that it went viral abroad showed that it can be appreciated in isolation from our domestic politics. You find it ludicrous? Stick with my cynical take for a moment…

As a non-English native speaker, even more than the New Yorker’s coverage it was the video reported and subtitled in Le Monde that struck a chord and showed that Julia Gillard had unintentionally done the right move no matter the local objections. The loose analogy that sprung to my mind was those English songs I grew up listening although I didn’t understand all the nuances of the lyrics. They had an appeal and symbolism that transcended our different cultures and languages. French kids didn’t have to understand all the lyrics of Midnight Oil’s Bed Are Burning or Blue Sky Mining to relate to those roaring and rhythmic anthems against the spoliation of indigenous cultures and the environment… The same goes for Gillard’s speech: you don’t have to be familiar with all the minutiae of Australian politics to appreciate the message.

Gillard’s speech echoes what happened to two unlikely French politicians who unashamedly played the cynics’ card to defend worthy causes: President Jacques Chirac and his French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.

In 2003 de Villepin gave an impassionate speech at the UN Security Council against a military intervention in Iraq. When he finished his remarks, the gallery burst into spontaneous applause, an unprecedented event at the UN. (video extracts at DemocracyNow.org)

” To those who are wondering in anguish when and how we are going to cede to war, I would like to tell them that nothing, at any time, in this Security Council, will be done in haste, misunderstanding, suspicion or fear.

In this temple of the United Nations, we are the guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience. The onerous responsibility and immense honour we have must lead us to give priority to disarmament in peace.

(..) This message comes to you today from an old country, France, from a continent like mine, Europe, that has known wars, occupation and barbarity. A country that does not forget and knows it owes everything to the freedom-fighters who came from America and elsewhere.

And yet, France has always stood upright in the face of history and before mankind. Faithful to its values, it wishes resolutely to act with all the members of the international community. It believes in our ability to build together a better world. “

Similarly at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, Jacques Chirac himself gave a speech which left his Greens political opponent stunned: they had been out-smarted on ringing environmental alarm bells on the world stage by a Chirac who suddenly embraced their rhetoric. The same Chirac who had been a fierce supporter of subsidising the French agriculture in the face of developing economies and had spent his political life supporting polluting industries of all sorts – not to mention the French nuclear tests in the Pacific that *he* restarted in 1995! Yet, you might be forgiven for believing from the following lines that Chirac was an environmentalist instead of a Right Wing leader back home…

” Our house is burning down and we’re blind to it. Nature, mutilated and overexploited, can no longer regenerate and we refuse to admit it. Humanity is suffering. It is suffering from poor development, in both the North and the South, and we stand indifferent. The earth and humankind are in danger and we are all responsible.

It is time to open our eyes. Alarms are sounding across all the continents. Europe is beset by natural disasters and health crises. The American economy, with its often-insatiable appetite for natural resources, seems to be hit by a crisis of confidence in the way it is managed. Latin America is again shaken by a financial, and hence social, crisis. In Asia, rising pollution evidenced by the brown cloud is spreading and threatening to poison an entire continent. Africa is plagued by conflicts, AIDS, desertification and famine. Some island countries are seeing their very existence threatened by climate warming.

We will not be able to say that we did not know! Let us make sure that the twenty-first century does not become, for future generations, the century of humanity’s crime against life itself. “

Did those speeches got those guys any more votes back home? No. Villepin did not even manage to be nominated as a candidate at the recent presidential election. Did they change any policies? Not an iota. The US still invaded Iraq in 2003, and Chirac’s environmentalist speech made many laugh out loud back home given the levels of pollution orchestrated in France’s name: just think of the oil company Total drilling and participating its share in “burning down the house”.

So yes those speeches were totally at odds with the political realities of Chirac and Villepin who belonged to the ruling conservative party inherently supportive of so many interests they seemed to denounce. But from a cynical internationalist point of view, it did not matter any more because they could become useful in somebody else’s hands. For instance I heard first hand in the Middle East how appreciative people were of the French stand on many issues and how they could use it as a wedge against the US neo-conservatives.

The point is to appreciate that Australia may be having one of those ‘Villepin moments’ – the last one probably being Rudd’s apology which also went viral around the world. Like it is often said that a text does not belong to the writer once it is published, it is possible that this tirade does not belong to Gillard any more but to those willing to push a little harder this rising new wave of feminism (*): although completely rhetorical and unintended, it is at least a little atonement and compensation extracted from this ‘Left’ government for all the disappointments and betrayals on other social fronts.

{ Sydney – 13 Oct 2012 }

(*): @BenEltham in New Matilda: http://newmatilda.com/2012/10/10/gillard-rides-new-wave-feminism