Women in Australia and around the world are celebrating a big victory: Australia now has its first female Prime Minister. But Gillard represents a victory for women, not for mothers.

Labor’s Julia Gillard challenged incumbent Kevin Rudd in a leadership spill that was quick, slick and over in less than a day (if only that would happen with BP’s spill).

What amazed me was not so much that Gillard is now Australia’s first female PM. That’s something to celebrate. After all, it’s been a long time since Australian women got the vote in 1901 (19 years before women in the U.S.).

Even more amazing to me, as someone who’s lived for nearly 15 years  in the United States, is that Gillard is breaking all sorts of conventions. She is:

• An atheist
• Unmarried, and
• Childless.

Any  one of these would’ve knocked her out of an American primary as too unconventional.

Could she have been elected here in the United States? I doubt it.

Could you imagine an atheist becoming President here in the United States? Not in our lifetime.

Crikey today says:

“All kinds of unprecedented for a PM, Julia Gillard is an ideabomb: at 48, she has never married, has chosen not to have children, is not a homemaker of any description …  and has a hairdresser boyfriend.”

Would Gillard have been able to rise to the top spot if she had children and a traditional relationship? Unlikely.

Gillard and Gillard’s mother agreed, in a profile with Australia’s Caroline Jones.

Her mother, Moira Gillard, is quoted as saying: ” I never thought Julia would marry, neither of my children married. I think she was about 18, she said, ‘I don’t want children, Mum, I never want children.’”

Gillard says: ” I suspect if I had made a different set of choices, I would have been a very conservative parent. I’m kind of full of admiration for women who can mix it together, working and having kids, but I’m not sure I could have. There’s something in me that’s focused and single-minded and if I was going to do that, I’m not sure I could have done this.”

Australian journalist and biographer Chris Wallace suggested that Gillard got to the top because she wasn’t very female.

“Julia is the power-broker. She is brilliant at wielding power and I think that’s a real breakthrough for Australian women.”

“[She wields power] intelligently, the old fashioned way. You can really forget the female element about her in terms of her ability to operate politically,” Wallace (a former coworker of mine) told Australia ABC Radio News.

Are we saying that to rise to the top of a party or a company you have to act like a man? That sort of sounds a bit retro/padded shoulders to me.

Who can imagine a mother of the same age as Gillard being elected to such a high level in the United States without someone attacking her for neglecting her kids? Even if she had a devoted partner or spouse,  nannies on tap, children who’d left home,
any woman of this age (Gillard is 48 today) would still be accused of years of neglect.

Men can do that and get away with it (just) but we still lag behind when it comes to these attitudes.

So when your daughter tells you she wants to be the President of the United States (as I saw one little girl write on a poster at my kids’ school) when she grows up, what are you going to tell her? Study hard, eat your peas and don’t have kids.

So what should Gillard’s partner/boyfriend be called? The Australian site Crikey did a poll asking what the first boyfriend should be called. About a third of people suggested Gillard’s partner should be called The First Bloke.

P.S. Before you slam me as an outsider let me say I have dual citizenship, my husband is American born and my eight year old twins are Americans by birth and, proudly, by culture. (Mom, you are NOT in Australia anymore!).

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