At Home with...Sexism?

Sometime this week, the ABC is premiering a new show- At Home with Julia. The show is based around Australia's first female Prime Minister and what she gets up to at home. One of the "sneak previews" I have seen features the lead actress (and her bad accent) talking about making her partner breakfast.

Wow. Riveting.

Out of all the members of Parliament, Gillard is probably one of the least interesting. If the ABC wanted to make a program about a politicians personal life, it would have been much easier (and funnier) to focus on someone more inappropriately outspoken like Tony Abbott or Bob Katter.

So why then focus on Gillard? It's not because she's the Prime Minister because no other PM in the past has been subjected to an entire TV show mocking them.

Sure, I remember Rove Live satirising then-PM Kevin Rudd a few years ago. But that wasn't about his home life. If anything, he was portrayed as a superhero (albeit a dysfunctional one).

No, AHWJ exists because Gillard is *gasp* a woman.

In seeking to portray Gillard at home, the program lessens her credibility as a Prime Minister and also (whether intentionally or not) makes the claim that, as a woman, Gillard belongs at home heating up cereal in a microwave rather in Parliament leading a country.

Whether or not you’re in the minority of voters who still prefer Gillard and Labor to be in power, does nothing to diminish the fact that Gillard deserves the same amount of respect afforded to the men who have had her job in the past.