Gemma Tognini: Is NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s treatment down to the ‘kind of’ woman she is?

It can be a terribly confusing thing, being a woman. Especially in 2020. In some circles, it’s even frowned upon to spell woman the way it is actually spelt. You know, in the dictionary. A yoga joint around the corner from me has gone with Womxn. Whatever toots your horn, I guess. Full disclosure, when I sat down to write this, I had in mind a direction to explore but as so often happens, when words make the journey from mind to page, I found myself challenged by what I was reading. Questioning and being challenged by my own views. I think that’s a good thing. Anyway, I’d been asking myself for weeks now, what kind of woman are we allowed to be? On the back of a few things, really. Such as the furore over President Donald Trump’s nomination to the US Supreme Court of a brilliant lawyer and accomplished judge, who also happens to be a devout Catholic and a mother of seven. What kind of woman IS allowed to be a judge — one with different politics? One with a different or no faith? You tell me. I asked it as I watched the NSW Premier bravely and deftly manage the COVID crisis in her State. As she resisted calls to go into another pointless and crippling lockdown, instead, ensuring their testing and tracing system is the envy of all Australia. It seemed odd to me that nobody was celebrating this. Nor the fact that they clearly learnt from (and apologised for) the disaster of the Ruby Princess. I watched the ongoing swoon-fest over the New Zealand Prime Minister, who it could be argued has destroyed that country’s economy for decades to come. You’d think she was a female version of John Key from all the carry on. Again, I found myself asking, what kind of woman are we allowed to celebrate? But back to Gladys. Not a great week for her. The personal humiliation was nuclear. The reaction such that you’d think she’d been caught, Fraser-style, wearing nothing but a towel in the lobby of a Tennessee hotel that (cough) charged for its rooms by the hour. I know she’s the Premier of NSW and as such, the bar is always set higher. But as an observer, I reckon this has been a different kind of reaction and for a moment, put aside the arguments about pub tests and the like. I’m talking about the reaction. Is it because she’s a 50-year-old woman who until now, everyone presumed was gallantly single, married to the job and all of a sudden is revealed to be human? With human frailties and a private life? Is it because she’s a woman on the conservative side of politics? Is it because of the bloke she was with? Maybe it’s because of all of these things. To be clear, Ms Berejiklian is not the subject of the Independent Commission against Corruption inquiry and you can bet your house that, had she been up to her eyeballs in it, the secretive and powerful ICAC would have been all over her like ants on a Chupa Chup. In what can only be described as a first for me, I applaud both the current and former Federal Opposition leaders both of whom described the embarrassing detail as a personal matter for the Premier. Have you listened to the audio of the phone taps? Read the ICAC hearing transcript? Even the smartest among us, men and women, have ignored relationship red flags, dated a dud and lived to regret it. Would the reaction have been as pearl-clutchingly hysterical had she been a different kind of woman? Or had she been a bloke? She’s 50 and unmarried. Intensely private. Seemed to be wedded to her job. No kids. And before you write that off, I know how people talk about women who are childless. I know it firsthand. We’re selfish. Married to our work. Not to be trusted, one woman told me. Oh yes, I know what it’s like to be that wrong kind of woman. Has some of the reaction to the revelations of her relationship been at least in part, because of some modern-day version of the Madonna-whore complex? You know, a woman is either all saint or all sinner? Bespectacled librarian or sexy ingenue? She can’t apparently be a 50-year-old single woman navigating a very demanding public life, the (assumed) desire for a meaningful relationship while being intelligent and skilled enough to manage conflict in her personal life. These are filters never applied to men, and typically as you all know I’m never the one to view things through the filter of gender. I loathe that, but here we are. 2020 keeps dishing up the surprises, eh? I don’t think it’s as simple as feminism, and I’m not sure that I am one, to be honest. The 21st-century version of feminism seems nothing more than a bunch of angry women getting together and being really bloody angry. I believe women, all women, should be free to make the choices that work for their lives, without being vilified for them. I believe that things like pay, opportunity and education should be gender blind. What functioning adult wouldn’t? Yet I keep circling back to the idea, based on both my observation and personal experience, that unless you tick the right boxes, you’re not in the lady-club. You’re not the right kind of woman. So, what is the right kind? In my view, it’s every single one of us.