About the film.
One in three Australian women experience discrimination or harassment in the workplace. Australia’s first and only female prime minister, Julia Gillard, was one of them.
Strong Female Lead examines Australia's struggle with women and power when a strong female takes the lead. Using archival footage, we see the attacks that characterised Gillard’s time in office – ever increasing in their vitriol, and sexual and violent overtones – as well as the gendered response of the public, media and parliament itself to Australia's first and only female prime minister.
Exploring the themes of sexism, power and misogyny, Strong Female Lead examines the issue of prejudice against women in leadership and its ongoing impact on female participation in our parliament, and society more broadly.
About the filmmakers.
Strong Female Lead is directed by Tosca Looby and edited by Rachel Grierson Johns. Both held a long time passion to tell the story of what happened in Australia when a woman took the top job. Their film has been built exclusively from archive.
They are also members of the team behind See What You Made Me Do, the seminal documentary series based on the work of Walkley award-winning journalist Jess Hill, which launched on SBS in May 2021.
Our female-led team has made some of Northern Pictures’ most awarded and recognised documentary content. We have tackled big subjects such as racism, mental health, disability, domestic violence and addiction. Strong Female Lead adds sexism and misogyny to the challenging line up.
“I’m a big believer that you never solve a problem unless you start talking about it so I’m glad we’re talking about it now.”
— Julia Gillard
Director’s Statement
It was a single photo which inspired this film.
In it, an adoring schoolgirl holds on tight to her prime minister – Jacinda Ardern – with both hands and gazes up at her with a thrilled expression. Ardern returns the girl’s grip and, though her back is turned to camera, the edge of her own grin is visible. A group of schoolmates are lined up behind the pair, smiling at the spectacle. It turns out Ardern had just delivered a speech at the girls’ school where two friends would not be returning after being shot in their mosque. I was transfixed by Ardern’s power at that moment to make these girls feel safer and that her power was reflected back in the face of the thrilled schoolgirl - who looked like she may never let go.
I thought about schoolgirls in Australia whose only connection to their own female prime minister might be via caricatures of a dumpy, pointy-nosed red head with a shrill voice. Older schoolgirls, now women, remember their one female PM more clearly. I started polling their generation for memories of Julia Gillard and heard repeatedly that they thought she was hung out to dry. And that they loved her misogyny speech. Like, really loved it.
Recent events have blown the lid on a toxic culture for women who work in Australia’s parliament. There is now no denying that women are ridiculed and threatened because they aren’t men. There is a deep and continuing resistance to women holding positions of leadership – especially the top job.
It has long been clear to us that Gillard’s story needed to be told in documentary form: a disciplined, hard-working, beautifully edited, cleverly wrought film made up of 100% archive, spanning the three years and three days of her tenure.
Strong Female Lead will not grandstand or rely on the benefit of hindsight, it will make its point – that Gillard was politically persecuted on the basis of gender – using the evidence of the day.
Strong Female Lead sieves the dirt which cloaked Julia Gillard’s time in office and displays the anthropological remains. We break Gillard’s time into important chapters, including: the lack of a political honeymoon; the constant personal attacks; the sexualisation of her relationships with other leaders; the way Gillard was reported on the international stage and at home; the raw hostility of the News Ltd press; the sorcery of the carbon tax; the power and sexist vitriol from commercial media; the brow beaten nature of the ABC and its inability to set the record straight; the ease with which Rudd, and industrial interests, used media to undermine her legitimacy; and the public witch burning/hate campaigns via YouTube, Facebook and other social media, while a raft of policy making and general efficiency passed in relative silence.
Editor Rachel Grierson Johns also had a long time passion to tell this story. Her eye for creative story constructs and her ability to build varying tempos and moods within her work have created a smart, dynamic tale. She is funny and irreverent and always searching for a crafted, shocking reveal. She has spent hundreds of hours sorting through an enormous jigsaw of archive – one eye on history and the other on an unfaltering story arc.
Composer Robert Davidson has created a soundtrack based on the words which swirled around our one female prime minister. The Australian Voices (TAV) have turned these words into a chorus of ‘us’, the voting public.
This film is a devastating portrait of sexism and misogyny in our Parliament and, as Gillard herself has done since leaving office, makes the case for immediate and real cultural change for the benefit of all.
Julia Gillard said when she was toppled:
“What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman, and the woman after that, and the woman after that, and I’m proud of that.”
Strong Female Lead is a reminder that, if we are to progress as a nation, this must come true.
– Tosca Looby, Director