Julia Gillard: 'The world is talking about girls' education'

Extract from The Guardian

The former prime minister of Australia has recently taken on another girls’ education role. She says the battle for equality fuels her work

Since leaving Australian politics, Julia Gillard has been inspired by campaigns for girls’ education. Photograph: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Anna Isaac

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Thursday 10 March 2016 22.58 AEDT 

“If you believe, as I do, that merit is equally distributed between the genders then if you look at any institution, like a parliament, and you don’t see roughly half men and half women then, clearly, you don’t have the people of the greatest merit there.”
Gender parity in global leadership is Julia Gillard’s ultimate aim. And the former Australian prime minister, now a figurehead in education, is clear that the way to achieve this is enabling girls and women to go to school. Gillard believes there’s momentum like never before on the issue.
“The world is talking about girls’ education and there is an impetus for change … The shooting of Malala, the kidnapping of girls by Boko Haram, and the increased evidence of how transformative girls education is.”
Gillard’s development work began in 2014, six months after being ousted as prime minister, something that she found hard to cope with. “When you come out of politics you’ve got to spend some time grieving the life that’s been lost,” she says. “There aren’t too many elegant exits from politics.”

In my hardest days as prime minister the fact we were making a difference to education and opportunity sustained me

Julia Gillard

But Gillard was not down for long. She soon realised that what had driven her so far in her political career – a “sense of purpose about education and opportunity” – could drive her in a development role. “In my hardest days as prime minister the fact we were making a difference to education and opportunity sustained me,” she says. Within a few months, she became chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and fellow of influential US think-tank Brookings.
When we speak she’s just been appointed patron for international education non-profit Camfed (the campaign for girls’ education). She accepted the post after being impressed by how the UK-based NGO combines grassroots working with scale. “Education is about a far more localised service,” she says. “It’s got to be sensitive to culture and context.”
Despite the momentum she believes is gathering around the women’s education agenda, she notes significant challenges. Not least the growing demand for governments to divert aid budgets towards the accommodation of refugees in the Middle East and Europe, which Gillard admits, presents problems not only in terms of funding, but also to the wider global education agenda.

“Gordon Brown has made this very clear with his no lost generation work – the risks that we are seeing now for displaced children now losing access to education. The children most at risk in that situation are girls,” she says.
“There are so many refugees moving to Lebanon, and the government is doing its best (with international support) to offer education to Syrian children as well as to its own population. But the impact that’s had on standards in the Lebanese education system shows how pressing these challenges are.”
But as the prime minister responsible for reopening the much criticised Nauru asylum detention centre – where the on site school closed in March last year, critics feel her commitment to global education and equality has been inconsistent at best, fair weather at worst.

Julia Gillard with Kevin Rudd who ousted her as prime minister in June 2013 Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

Clearly uncomfortable when pushed on the issue, Gillard becomes defensive, answering briefly before diverting to the Labor party press office for current Australian policy. “When I was in government we faced a very difficult set of circumstances with unauthorised boat arrivals,” she says. “But when families [arrived] we did make provision for them. We would make arrangements for their education. I’ve always believed in all circumstances kids have got a right to education and acted consistently in that.”
She’s far more willing to discuss the importance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and her changing stance on gay marriage, which she voted against in Australia. “I thought there was a different way of achieving equality both for same sex couples and for heterosexual couples. I freely acknowledge now that the nature of the global debate has moved on.” Gillard is keen to add that she’d now vote yes in a referendum on the issue.

Gillard became well-known beyond Australian politics when her parliamentary speech on misogyny went viral and the frustration she feels at gender inequality still drives a her to support and encourage female leadership.
“Perceptions of women leaders still have far too much of a focus on appearance, far too much a focus on family structures,” she says. “There’s a predisposition to think that women end up in leadership positions are necessarily unlikeable, are hardball and all of those sort of stereotypes.”
She avoids comparing her own experience to that of women she meets through her work with global girls’ education however.
“I’m conscious that compared to many of the women I meet I’ve led a tremendously privileged, indeed pandered, life,” she says. “I know what it’s like to experience some gender challenges, but the women I’ve just spoken to in Camfed have faced huge difficulties in their lives.”
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