Australia’s First Female Prime Minister Requires 4 Minutes to Respond: Grappling with the Definition of Woman

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard was put on the spot while giving a talk at Government House in Adelaide, South Australia when asked to give the definition of a woman.

“What is a woman?” audience member and women’s rights activist Biddy O’Loughlin asked the former Labor Party leader on Aug. 25.

“Do you agree with Queensland’s Attorney General Minister for Women Shannon Fentiman that trans women are women and with UK’s leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer that some women can have a penis?”

Ms. Gillard said she was “very happy” to answer the question but spent nearly five minutes talking about the debates around inclusion and diversity without directly addressing the issue.

“I should just say that I spend around half of each year in the UK, and in the UK, this has become a kind of gotcha parlour game,” she began.

“So if you’re listening to the radio, literally there’ll be some person on there from London City Council who’s trying to tell you why the traffic’s not going to flow well that day, and the journo will be saying, ‘Can you tell me what a woman is?’ to try and create these gotcha moments. I think we’ve just gotta move away from all of that and just come at this once again from first principles.”

Then she acknowledged the diverse stories and life experiences in the community.

“Amongst that rich diversity, there are a number of people who genuinely believe that they are trapped in the wrong body and they want to be recognised as the gender their mind and body have always told them that they are. and it doesn’t go one way, it goes both ways,” she continued.

Ms. Gillard, who is an atheist, said that what really counts is openness and the spirit of inclusion.

“We want to show everybody else in the community, love, inclusion, and respect. And there are a set of issues that need to be thought through … about prison arrangements, about fairness in elite sports, those sorts of things,” she said.

She also emphasised that she stands firmly with trans activists.

“Transsexual women believe that part of that inclusion is referring to them the way they want to be referred to, using the pronouns that they want to be used, not want to have used about them. I would seek to do that in that circumstance. And I think if we can do all of that, we can kind of take the temperature out of this,” she added.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Response

Ms. Gillard’s four-minute response stood in stark contrast to her successor, current Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, who responded to the same question from Piers Morgan in May with: “An adult female.”

He also said that he respected people for whoever they were while saying young people coming to terms with their identity should also be respected.

In recent months, prominent individuals have struggled to answer the same question.

The direct answer from Albanese comes after New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins tripped up in trying to answer the question during a press conference.

Hipkins said he was surprised by the question.

“To be honest, that question has come slightly out of left field for me,” Hipkins told reporters on April 3 (pdf).

“Well, biology, sex, gender.”

He then paused before stating that people can define their own gender identity.

“People define themselves, people define their own genders.”

In Australia, former Chief Health Officer Brendan Murphy had difficulty answering the question during a parliamentary hearing.

“There are a variety of definitions and perhaps to give a more fulsome answer we should take it on notice. It’s a very, very, contested space,” Mr. Murphy responded.