Julia Gillard (48) is the first female prime minister in Australia’s history. Gillard became the Leader of the Australian Labor Party at the 2010 Australian Labor Party leadership election on 24 June 2010 and was sworn in as prime minister later that day. She had previously served as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia under Kevin Rudd. Gillard has been a Labor Party member of the House of Representatives since the 1998 federal election.
Ms Gillard said she had challenged for the prime minister’s job because “a good government had lost its way” and she did not want to see cuts in health and education if the opposition Liberal Party won the next election. In Canberra, Ms Gillard is considered a consummate political performer who has impressed the public, her political colleagues and departmental chiefs with her ability to juggle responsibilities and still deliver.
Gillard is also the first foreign-born prime minister since Billy Hughes, who served from 1915 to 1923, and Australia’s first prime minister who has never married. Her partner since 2006, Tim Mathieson, is a hairdresser she met in a Melbourne salon in 2006. Gillard once acknowledged that she was a “non-practicing Baptist” and “not religious”. She is tolerant of public interest in her personal life, stating that “People want to know who you are, the shape of your life. That is legitimate.”
Julia Gillard with Tim Mathieson
People who have known Ms Gillard for a long time, said that even as a teenager, she was intensely focused. The young Ms Gillard excelled at school and went to study arts and law at Adelaide University, where she became prominent in campus politics and rose to become president of the Australian Union of Students.
After university Julia Gillard became one of the first female partners at the law firm Slater & Gordon, where she worked on industrial relations, winning friends and allies in the country’s powerful union movement. It was those alliances that helped her secure enough support to win the leadership.
“I want a career and I want to get to the top. I’ve no time for marriage and kids.”
The fact that Julia Gillard has never been officially married and don’t have children became the reason for many jokes including this video:
Ms Gillard is the daughter of a coal miner and names Nye Bevan as one of greatest political inspirations. The child of working-class parents who were raised in poverty, Ms. Gillard moved to Australia from her native Wales when she was 4 years old. She says her start in life greatly influenced her leftist sensibilities and willingness to fight her corner. After starting life in a modest two-bedroom terrace in Barry, she now lives in a large home in the Melbourne suburb of Altona, and owns another flat in Canberra.
There are 15 female World leaders at this time which is a record high number. Countries besides Australia which have female prime minister or president also includes Ireland, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, India. Sri Lanka was the first country in the world to have a female prime minister, in 1960. Isabel Peron of Argentina became the world’s first woman president in 1974.