Thread by @bairdjulia

THREAD:
In 2004 I wrote a book called "Media Tarts: How the Australian press frames female politicians". It was about the tropes the media used to diminish & deride women MPS: steel sheilas, covergirls, housewives, sluts. Now I've updated it and it's being re-released this month.

It's uncanny - & troubling - how relevant it remains. For this research, I spent years trawling press clippings files in every state, interviewing women MPs, journalists, editors & the patterns were strikingly similar - women were interlopers in a space designed for & by men. /2

Without understanding this history, we can't understand where we are now. Or what happened to Julia Gillard, Julia Banks, Julie Bishop, even Brittany Higgins. We've long struggled to respect women in positions of authority. They've been novelties, decorations, reluctant saints./3

The book is an attempt to explain this history, the roots of an oft-expressed contempt for women in public life, the drowning of their voices, exaggerations of their flaws. This began decades ago and continues today, despite the inroads and triumphs. /4

There is also a new foreword by the excellent @annabelcrabb, whose documentary, #MsRepresented, drops tonight and will be compulsory, provocative viewing. This is the story of women who changed parliament! 8 pm tonight on, of course @ABCTV /5
abc.net.au/news/2021-07-1…

And thanks to the ever incisive @anniewhiteabc who read the entire original version and survived. Greatly appreciated her thoughts.