Julia Gillard, former Australian PM: The backsliding of gender equality
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“One of the things that was going to combat gender inequality in our world was that sense of progress and then to see in the research that actually the younger generation is more conservative on these questions than people my age, that deeply troubled me.”
Lucy Hockings speaks to Julia Gillard former Australian PM and chair at the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, King’s College London about new research on equality.
Having worked her way to the top in the male dominated world of Australian politics, Julia knows about sexism and misogyny. She famously called it out in a speech against opposition leader Tony Abbott in 2012 and has always been a proponent of equality for women. But 14 years on and research from the organisation she now leads finds that more and more young men want a traditional wife that obeys her husband and that’s not too independent*. So what has gone wrong?
Lucy and Julia unpick the research and analyse the factors behind this backsliding, and they also discuss Julia’s time as Australia’s first ever female head of government. The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presenter: Lucy Hockings Producer: Clare Williamson Editor: Justine Lang
Get in touch with us on email TheInterview@bbc.co.uk and use the hashtag #TheInterviewBBC on social media.
*31% of Gen Z men (born between 1997 and 2012) agree that a wife should always obey her husband and one third (33%) say a husband should have the final word on important decisions, according to a new global study of 23,000 people in 29-countries conducted by Ipsos UK and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s Business School, King’s College London.
(Image: Julia Gillard Credit: Vicki Couchman for King’s College London)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.9 | Hello, I'm Lucy Hawking's BBC News presenter, |
| 0:09.3 | and this is the interview from the BBC World Service, |
| 0:12.2 | the best conversations coming out of the BBC, |
| 0:15.1 | people shaping our world from all over the world. |
| 0:18.5 | If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. |
| 0:23.2 | We have never seen a people so united. |
| 0:26.7 | Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. |
| 0:29.4 | Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. |
| 0:33.5 | We're more popular than populism. |
| 0:36.7 | For this interview, I met Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia |
| 0:40.8 | and chair at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College, |
| 0:44.8 | whilst in London for International Women's Day. |
| 0:48.1 | Still, the only woman to have held the premiership. |
| 0:51.3 | You're going to hear about the misogyny she faced as Australian Prime |
| 0:54.6 | Minister and how women in the public eye have an even harder time now because of online abuse. |
| 1:00.7 | A champion of equality and breaking glass ceilings, Julia shares her view on why the scales |
| 1:06.0 | seem to be tipping towards a more macho culture and what that means for women and men. |
| 1:12.3 | We discussed new research that shows a growing number of young men think that women should |
| 1:17.2 | obey their husbands and believe in traditional gender roles, and we'll ask what are the factors |
| 1:22.9 | that influence these attitudes? |
| 1:24.9 | There is the manosphere and increasingly a cultural zeitgeist that |
... |
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