Speaker 1: Pushkin. Saint James Palace in London, down the street from
Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace. It's the official residence of the British Monarchy,
Speaker 1: built in the fifteen thirties by Henry the Eighth. It's
Speaker 1: not open to the public, but you can apply to
Speaker 1: go inside, which I did not long ago. It's not
Speaker 1: that hard. As a soldier with a machine gun standing
Speaker 1: by a little cottage. He tells me to go inside,
Speaker 1: and then a man named Desmond Shaw Taylor comes and
Speaker 1: gets me. He's the curator of the Royal Art Collection.
Speaker 1: Early Middle Aged distinguished, a kind of high end exuberance.
Speaker 1: You look at that building now, it's kind of missing
Speaker 1: a fib a nice jumble. I came here to see
Speaker 1: a painting butt by Queen Victoria nearly one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. It's called the Roll Call. Inside the
Speaker 1: palace there's red everywhere, Royal red, red carpets, red wallpaper.
Speaker 1: All the trim is in gold. The rooms are massive
Speaker 1: and almost entirely empty except for the art on the walls.
Speaker 1: Enormous canvases spanning many centuries everywhere, and in a kind
Speaker 1: of hallway not far from the entrance there it is
Speaker 1: roll Call eighteen seventy four. The absolute point of the
Speaker 1: Roll Call is that it has a single brilliant image idea.
Speaker 1: The painting depicts a group of British soldiers in the
Speaker 1: Crimean War, which is a war England and France fought
Speaker 1: against Russia in the eighteen fifties. In Roll Call, there's
Speaker 1: just been a battle and the soldiers are lining up
Speaker 1: in the gray light of morning to be reviewed by
Speaker 1: the commanding officer. We start talking about a particularly distinctive
Speaker 1: figure in the middle of the painting. Desmond has a
Speaker 1: flashlight in his hand because it's quite gloomy in the palace.
Speaker 1: Of course, palaces are supposed to be gloomy. He shines
Speaker 1: the light directly on the man's face. That's a brave
Speaker 1: young man who manages to stand up brighton. And this
Speaker 1: sort of encounter is suggestive of comradeship, isn't it. Sin
Speaker 1: James Palace has dozens of war paintings, Handsome generals on
Speaker 1: white chargers, panoramic battle scenes, faceless soldiers in glistening uniforms.
Speaker 1: They're almost cartoons. But in Roll Call the men are exhausted, wounded,
Speaker 1: defiant but draggled. It's real and they are standing in
Speaker 1: a line, but they're not in a straight line, and
Speaker 1: they're not anonymous. Yes, so it's got one fantastic idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to the first
Speaker 1: episode of my podcast, Revisionist History. Every week for the
Speaker 1: next ten weeks, I'm going to take you back to
Speaker 1: examine something that I think has been overlooked or misunderstood.
Speaker 1: One week, I'm going to talk about a car crash
Speaker 1: just outside of San Diego. Another week, I'm going to
Speaker 1: take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon.
Speaker 1: The tagline of this show sometimes the past deserves a
Speaker 1: second chance, and that really goes to the heart of it.
Speaker 1: I think too often we make up our minds about
Speaker 1: something that has happened, and then we move on without
Speaker 1: pausing to ask, Wait a minute, is that actually what happened?
Speaker 1: Do we really understand it? I'm starting with something very simple,
Speaker 1: a painting the roll call all but Forgotten. Now, if
Speaker 1: you want to see it before you listen to this,
Speaker 1: you can pause and go to revisionist history dot com.
Speaker 1: But in eighteen seventy four, when this painting became famous,
Speaker 1: something extraordinary happened that I think is worth revisiting because
Speaker 1: it's an issue that we deal with all the time today,
Speaker 1: which is what it means to be the first, the
Speaker 1: first outsider to enter a closed world. The art world
Speaker 1: in England at that time is controlled by something called
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy. It consists of forty artists and being
Speaker 1: elected to the Royal Academy is the highest honor any
Speaker 1: artist can get. It's like winning an Oscar. Membership makes
Speaker 1: your reputation and makes it possible to become very wealthy
Speaker 1: as an artist. And every year the Academy puts on
Speaker 1: an art exhibition. Thousands of paintings are submitted, they choose
Speaker 1: a select few and display them at Burlington House on Piccadilly.
Speaker 1: Remember this is before movies and television and recorded music,
Speaker 1: painting is it. Hundreds of thousands of people come to
Speaker 1: these shows and roll Call gets chosen for the Royal Academy,
Speaker 1: and not just chosen, chosen in a way that makes
Speaker 1: it a really big deal. First of all, where the
Speaker 1: Academy hangs a painting on the wall matters a lot.
Speaker 1: If they hang it way up near the ceiling, if
Speaker 1: they sky it, that means you're painting is considered second class.
Speaker 1: If they hang it at eye level, what's called on
Speaker 1: the line, that's fantastic. Roll Call is on the line.
Speaker 1: Then there's where in Burlington House they put it. There's
Speaker 1: a gallery in the back called the Lecture Room. The
Speaker 1: lecture room is known as the black Hole. Being hung
Speaker 1: in the black Hole was almost as bad as not
Speaker 1: being hung at all. But if they hang a painting
Speaker 1: near the front in gallery two, that's incredibly prestigious. So
Speaker 1: where was roll Call hung gallery two? Unbelievable? On the
Speaker 1: line in Gallery two I was reading about it creates
Speaker 1: an extraordinary sensation. Yes, completely in an unusual way, even
Speaker 1: for that time. The day the show opens, the crowds
Speaker 1: make a bee line for Roll Call. The crowds were
Speaker 1: so great that you had to have basically we employ
Speaker 1: a warden, but the police want to say, you know,
Speaker 1: date touch or yeah, move on. The only contemporary equivalent
Speaker 1: I can think of is people camping out in line
Speaker 1: for two days to buy Beyonce tickets, or the kind
Speaker 1: of frenzy the Beatles faced when they first came to America.
Speaker 1: Roll Call is the hit of the Royal Academy show.
Speaker 1: After that, Roll Call goes in a Tour of England.
Speaker 1: In Newcastle, men walk up and down the sidewalks with
Speaker 1: sandwich boards saying simply, the Roll Call is coming. In Liverpool,
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people go to see it. In those days,
Speaker 1: prominent paintings were put on little playing cards, and two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand cards are sold with an image
Speaker 1: of Roll Call. A bidding war breaks out among potential buyers.
Speaker 1: Fly Queen Victoria, one of the greatest art collectors of
Speaker 1: her day, decides she absolutely has to have it, which
Speaker 1: is how it comes to hang in Saint James's Palace.
Speaker 1: Desmond Shaw Taylor must have seen Roll Call a thousand times,
Speaker 1: but as he shines his flashlight over the artist brushwork,
Speaker 1: it's like he's seeing it for the first time. He's
Speaker 1: excited about every little detail, even down to the soldier's shoes.
Speaker 1: That's pretty fabulous, isn't that. It's always so difficult to
Speaker 1: and to paint nothing in particular happening without over doing it.
Speaker 1: And if you just get one gray color and just
Speaker 1: a little bit of underpenctuingly and just pick out pulls
Speaker 1: the shoes, it's very impressive. M I mean, I'm enjoying
Speaker 1: looking at this it's a remarkable story, but I've left
Speaker 1: out the most remarkable fact of all the artist, an unknown,
Speaker 1: more importantly, a woman. At a time when the art
Speaker 1: world was overwhelmingly male, British women in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: weren't even allowed to study fine art. It was a
Speaker 1: closed world. And suddenly, in the middle of that closed
Speaker 1: world there enters a striking young woman named Elizabeth Thompson,
Speaker 1: raised in Switzerland by wealthy Bohemian parents, an outsider, and
Speaker 1: she breaks down the door. I've been fascinated by the
Speaker 1: story of Elizabeth Thompson for years, by roll Call, and
Speaker 1: more particularly by what happened to Elizabeth Thompson after the
Speaker 1: stunning success of her painting. What fascinates me is how
Speaker 1: her story is repeated over and over again. Once you
Speaker 1: know about Elizabeth Thompson, you see Elizabeth Thompson's everywhere. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever heard of Julia Gillard. She
Speaker 1: was the first woman to become Prime Minister of Australia.
Speaker 1: She served from twenty ten to twenty thirteen, and she
Speaker 1: had an incredibly tumultuous time in office. Near the end
Speaker 1: of her tenure, she gave a famous speech on the
Speaker 1: floor of the Australian Parliament. Here's the part everyone noticed.
Speaker 1: The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold
Speaker 1: sexist views and who are malogynists are not appropriate for
Speaker 1: high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition
Speaker 1: has got a piece of paper and he is writing
Speaker 1: out his resignation, because if he wants to know what
Speaker 1: misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a
Speaker 1: motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a mirac
Speaker 1: That's what he needs. When I heard Julia Gillard give
Speaker 1: that speech, I thought about Elizabeth Thompson because Gillard and
Speaker 1: Thompson were in the same situation. Women dealing with the
Speaker 1: consequences are breaking down the door. I also remember Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Thompson when I think of Hillary Clinton. An idea that
Speaker 1: I think helps explain the phenomenon of Elizabeth Thompson and
Speaker 1: Julia Gillard. It's called moral licensing. It's a fairly new
Speaker 1: concept in social psychology. It was developed by a number
Speaker 1: of the best young psychologists in the field, chief among
Speaker 1: them Daniel Ephron, who teaches at the London Business School.
Speaker 1: Here's the official definition of moral licensing. Past good deeds
Speaker 1: can liberate individuals to engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical,
Speaker 1: or otherwise problematic, behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for
Speaker 1: fear of feeling or appearing immoral. When we do something good,
Speaker 1: in other words, sometimes we then, on occasion give ourselves
Speaker 1: permission to do something bad. One of Ephron's first experiments
Speaker 1: in moral licensing was in two thousand and nine. He
Speaker 1: surveys people who publicly self identify as supporters of Barack
Speaker 1: Obama for president, and what he finds is that supporting
Speaker 1: up black politician doesn't always signal that you're a racially
Speaker 1: open person who is inclined to be progressive in other areas.
Speaker 1: It can also have the opposite effect. It can free
Speaker 1: you up to go back to your old racist ways
Speaker 1: because you've proven to the world what a good person
Speaker 1: you are. And that's what he discovers. A significant chunk
Speaker 1: of the people who supported Barack Obama were then more likely,
Speaker 1: at least in the experiment, to express racially questionable opinions.
Speaker 1: I was taken by this finding that people appear to
Speaker 1: be able to license themselves based on pretty pultry virtues.
Speaker 1: I met Effron in his office in London up near
Speaker 1: Regent's Park. I asked him why a little egalitarian behavior
Speaker 1: doesn't lead to more egalitarian behavior. Why don't good deeds
Speaker 1: just lead to more good deeds? So your question is
Speaker 1: about when does evidence that I'm virtuous lead to more
Speaker 1: virtuous behavior versus when does evidence of virtue lead to
Speaker 1: less virtuous behavior? When does doing good lead to doing bad?
Speaker 1: And one is doing good lead to doing more good?
Speaker 1: This is the million dollar question in this literature, and
Speaker 1: it's been a puzzle. All we know is that human
Speaker 1: beings go both ways after a good deed, they sometimes
Speaker 1: follow a virtuous trajectory and sometimes they don't. There's what
Speaker 1: happens after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven becomes the first ever black professional baseball player.
Speaker 1: Within five years there are one hundred and fifty black
Speaker 1: ball players in the major leagues. I think that's what
Speaker 1: we expect. It fits our romantic notions of progress. The
Speaker 1: door opens for one person, and soon it opens for everyone.
Speaker 1: But what we have to understand is that a lot
Speaker 1: of times the opposite happens. The door opens for one
Speaker 1: person and they're the only one to slip in. Those
Speaker 1: who open the door then feel free to close it
Speaker 1: again for everybody else. A couple of years the Israeli
Speaker 1: author Almost Elan wrote a history of the Jews in
Speaker 1: Germany called The Pity of It All. It's a fascinating
Speaker 1: book for precisely this reason, because what Elan is interested
Speaker 1: in is the great paradox of Germany's history with the Jews.
Speaker 1: Here we have a country that committed the greatest historical
Speaker 1: atrocity against the Jewish people. Yet if you take the
Speaker 1: long view as Alan does, you see the time and
Speaker 1: time again German culture welcome Jews, or at least welcomed
Speaker 1: some Jews. From the seventeenth century onwards, Many German states
Speaker 1: had a tradition of what we're called court Jews. Most
Speaker 1: Jews were banned from living in major German cities. There
Speaker 1: were severe restrictions on what they could do, but simultaneously
Speaker 1: there was a group of protected Jews who were allowed
Speaker 1: to live and work within the city walls. In the
Speaker 1: seventeen thirties, the King of Prussia becomes alarmed by the
Speaker 1: number of Jews in Prussia, likening them to locusts bringing
Speaker 1: ruin to Christians, so he wishes them from Berlin, but
Speaker 1: not all of them. He kicks out one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty families, and he keeps one hundred and twenty. That
Speaker 1: pattern is repeated over and again in the German speaking world.
Speaker 1: In the eighteenth century, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who is Jewish,
Speaker 1: was considered one of the most brilliant men in Europe.
Speaker 1: He lives in Berlin, and people come from far and
Speaker 1: wide to visit him. How does he stay in Berlin?
Speaker 1: The King grants him exceptional status. That is to say,
Speaker 1: and these are almos Alan's words here, Mendelssohn is the
Speaker 1: Unjewish jew. The same happens a hundred years later with
Speaker 1: Bertild Auerbach. He's Jewish and he's the most widely read
Speaker 1: German novelist of his day. He's called the German Dickens.
Speaker 1: This is now at a time of virulent anti Semitism
Speaker 1: throughout Germany, but Bertild Auerbach is somehow immune from that prejudice.
Speaker 1: Richard Wagner Wagner, the notorious anti Semite, loves our Bach
Speaker 1: and calls him a man rooted in German life. One
Speaker 1: of the brothers Grimm, thanks Auerbach for curing him of prejudice.
Speaker 1: The Germans hate Jews as a rule, but they love Auerbach.
Speaker 1: What's going on here? It sounds like a contradiction, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's just textbook moral licensing. The Germans love Berthold Auerbach,
Speaker 1: and because they think they have demonstrated their open mindedness
Speaker 1: by loving this one Jew, they feel free to act
Speaker 1: in the most despicable way to other Jews. You opened
Speaker 1: the door to one outsider, and that gives you permission
Speaker 1: to close the door to others. After seeing roll Call
Speaker 1: at Saint James's Palace, I went to the tape and
Speaker 1: sat on a little bench outside the Turner Gallery with
Speaker 1: Paul Usherwood. Usherwood is an art historian who was written
Speaker 1: extensively on Elizabeth Thompson. In fact, I first learned about
Speaker 1: Sabeth Thompson because they stumbled across an absolutely brilliant article
Speaker 1: by Usherwood in the Woman's Art Journal. It was called
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Thompson Butler, a case of tokenism. Usherwood is whispy
Speaker 1: and tweedy in the best possible English way. I imagined
Speaker 1: that after our chat he would go straight home, spend
Speaker 1: an hour in the garden, then go for a brisk
Speaker 1: walk across a few soggy fields with the dogs. Ushwood
Speaker 1: argues that in making sense of what happened to Elizabeth Thompson,
Speaker 1: it's really important to understand the role of the Royal Academy.
Speaker 1: They control the art world at this point forty aloof
Speaker 1: dictatorial white men. As an institution was just very, very powerful.
Speaker 1: I'm much resented by people who weren't very well by it.
Speaker 1: Academy members gave their own pictures the best positions on
Speaker 1: the walls of the annual exhibition. Meanwhile, they pretty much
Speaker 1: ignored everyone else's art, including in eighteen four the Irwin
Speaker 1: roll call went up. Yeah, there were six thousands paintings
Speaker 1: which didn't make the expressions. There's only one art show
Speaker 1: that matters in England, and it's so small that thousands
Speaker 1: of artists are stuck on the outside looking in. It
Speaker 1: is a revolution brewing. So long comes Elizabeth Thompson, a woman,
Speaker 1: an outsider with an absolutely brilliant painting, and the Academy
Speaker 1: hangs it on the line in gallery too, and everyone
Speaker 1: thinks this is a sign that the Academy is finally
Speaker 1: opening its doors to what to the holy Grail membership
Speaker 1: in the Royal Academy itself, it seems destined to happen.
Speaker 1: One of the most prominent art critics of the day
Speaker 1: writes in The Daily Telegraph that roll Call success proves that,
Speaker 1: and I'm quoting here, real genius has no insurmountable obstacles
Speaker 1: in the English art world. In short order, Thompson is
Speaker 1: nominated for election to the Royal Academy. She's one of
Speaker 1: the most famous artists in England. She is a huge
Speaker 1: public following. Every artist in the country is riveted by
Speaker 1: her candidacy. And what happens. She loses, but by just
Speaker 1: two votes. It doesn't feel at the end, everyone says,
Speaker 1: this is progress. Here we have a young artist, still
Speaker 1: in her twenties, and on her first try she comes
Speaker 1: within a harsh breath of acceptance into the old boys club.
Speaker 1: Everyone thinks that she's going to be a lock for
Speaker 1: election the next time round. They look at her and
Speaker 1: they say Elizabeth Thompson, pioneer. But then Thompson submits another
Speaker 1: painting to the Academy, another brilliant painting called quatrebra a
Speaker 1: depiction of the Battle of Waterloo. Well's She's a celebrity
Speaker 1: and has fantastic assistance from the animated I mean three
Speaker 1: hundred soldiers points operated so she could paint that picture.
Speaker 1: This is in eighteen seventy five, the year after roll
Speaker 1: Call's triumph. So what happens to Quatra Brad What they
Speaker 1: do is they stuff it away in an obscure corner,
Speaker 1: says one heart sees. Thompson's new work is hung in
Speaker 1: the lecture room at the back the black hole, and
Speaker 1: the black hole is where her election to the Royal
Speaker 1: Academy also goes. Remember she was within two votes of
Speaker 1: getting in, and everybody said she's a lock for the
Speaker 1: next time around, but she isn't. There is no next
Speaker 1: time around. Instead, the male Academy members have these absurd
Speaker 1: internal conversations about how it would work if a woman
Speaker 1: ever got elected. What about the etiquette. That's a banquet,
Speaker 1: how would that be arranged? Who would bring in? It
Speaker 1: was the thing for the male academician to escort a
Speaker 1: woman into the banquet. How would that work with a woman?
Speaker 1: They fussed about it. They tied themselves in knots at
Speaker 1: the thought of a woman entering their club. So the
Speaker 1: Academy members pass new regulations to limit the privileges of
Speaker 1: any women who might get elected in the future, because
Speaker 1: they've proven their bona fides. They hung roll Call on
Speaker 1: the line in gallery too. Who can doubt how open
Speaker 1: and progressive they are? Now they can go back to
Speaker 1: the way they were. In eighteen eighty one, Elizabeth Thompson
Speaker 1: paints what might be her most famous painting, Scotland Forever.
Speaker 1: It's a thrilling depiction of a charge at the Scots
Speaker 1: Grays at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Scotland Forever is never
Speaker 1: shown at the Royal Academy, and Thompson doesn't even try
Speaker 1: again to get elected. She can read the writing on
Speaker 1: the wall. In fact, no woman would be elected to
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy until nineteen thirty six, more than half
Speaker 1: a century later. As for Thompson, she married an army
Speaker 1: officer named William Butler. She changed her name. She raised
Speaker 1: six children. Her career took a back seat to her husband's.
Speaker 1: When he writes his memoirs, he doesn't say a word
Speaker 1: about her. His own wife, one of the most famous
Speaker 1: artists in England. His Ortimard Fay Forum PITTI five pages,
Speaker 1: She's not mentioned the index. He mentions that he was married,
Speaker 1: he mentions that he did have children. That's it. And
Speaker 1: when she writes her memoirs, she acts as if the
Speaker 1: whole incident with her near election to the Royal Academy
Speaker 1: never happened. Today people would write an entire book about it.
Speaker 1: But she's been defeated and she knows it. Here's all
Speaker 1: she says. As it turned out in eighteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: I lost my election by two votes. Only since then
Speaker 1: I think the door has been closed. And wisely that's
Speaker 1: the part that always gets me. And wisely she's given up.
Speaker 1: Remember how I'm mentioned that when I saw a roll call,
Speaker 1: the first thing I thought about was Julia Gillard, the
Speaker 1: former Prime Minister of Australia. That's because it's the same story.
Speaker 1: Gillard's election was a milestone in Australian history, the same
Speaker 1: way it would be for any country. Australia had been
Speaker 1: an independent nation for more than a century, one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten years of uninterrupted male rule, and that came
Speaker 1: to an end in twenty ten with this funny whip,
Speaker 1: smart tough woman. In former British colonies like Australia, the
Speaker 1: representative of the British Crown is called the Governor General,
Speaker 1: and the Governor General is a person who swears in
Speaker 1: the new Prime minister. When Gilliard stands up to take
Speaker 1: the oath of office, it's a doubly incredible moment. What
Speaker 1: made it loom large for me that day is our
Speaker 1: governor General at that time was the first woman to
Speaker 1: ever serve as Governor general. This is Julia Gillard telling
Speaker 1: the story. And I could see in her and in
Speaker 1: her eyes, you know, this incredible shock or delight that
Speaker 1: she was going to be the person to swear in
Speaker 1: the first woman prime minister. I, Julia, eileened your life, Celia,
Speaker 1: firm and declare that I will well surely said a
Speaker 1: Commonwealth of Australia. And you know she subsequently said to me, look,
Speaker 1: I didn't think i'd live to see it. I didn't
Speaker 1: think i'd live to see the day our nation had
Speaker 1: a female prime minister. It's a big deal. And Gillard,
Speaker 1: like many at the time, thinks that Australia has undergone
Speaker 1: a permanent transformation. And she also thinks that after the
Speaker 1: novelty of her election passes, she'll just be Prime Minister Gillard,
Speaker 1: the fact of her gender will become unremarkable, the way
Speaker 1: the fact of a baseball player's race is now unremarkable.
Speaker 1: If you'd asked me then that all would have played
Speaker 1: itself out in the first few months. And then I thought,
Speaker 1: sort of the political cycle, I'd go back to normal,
Speaker 1: and I made that judgment call spectacularly wrong. When was
Speaker 1: the first moment did you realized you were wrong? Oh? Look,
Speaker 1: I don't think it was a you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the thud of a penny dropping in my brain. But
Speaker 1: it just became clearer and clearer, particularly by the time
Speaker 1: we were in the government second year and we were
Speaker 1: putting a price on carbon and the campaigning against that
Speaker 1: by the opposition and in the community was getting hotter
Speaker 1: and shriller. It was in the course of that the
Speaker 1: gendered stuff really started to show. Things got ugly, you're
Speaker 1: the people would like them. Her opponents would circulate lude
Speaker 1: sexual cartoons of her. She would be referred to in
Speaker 1: the newspapers as Julia, as if she was a reality
Speaker 1: TV star and not the head of state. The media
Speaker 1: would constantly refer to the outfit she wore, or how
Speaker 1: much cleavage she showed, or the tone of her voice.
Speaker 1: The CEO of a major Australian company publicly called her
Speaker 1: an unproductive old cow. One restaurant offered on its menu.
Speaker 1: Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail, small breasts, huge thighs in
Speaker 1: a big red box. Was there any particular moment or
Speaker 1: thing said that that hurts you the most? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's obviously not a good thing to look out on
Speaker 1: a scene of protesters and see yourself described as a
Speaker 1: bitch and a witch and things like that. But for me, actually,
Speaker 1: the worst moment in my prime ministership was not in
Speaker 1: and of itself agendered remark, but came from a shock jock.
Speaker 1: She's talking about the Russia limbab of Australia, a major
Speaker 1: radio personality who hosts a fundraiser the Conservative Party, the
Speaker 1: other party nut Julie Gillard's and I had recently outlost
Speaker 1: my father. My father died while I was Prime minister.
Speaker 1: And he said to this audience that my father had
Speaker 1: died of shame because he was ashamed of me as
Speaker 1: prime minister. I mean that was the worst. Oh wow, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's appalling. It is appalling, It is appalling, and you
Speaker 1: know it's you don't expect to have to do that
Speaker 1: in your life, and you don't expect that, you know,
Speaker 1: someone like my mother who's just a lovely woman and
Speaker 1: a great Australian citizen should have to tolerate that being
Speaker 1: said about the husband she's just lost. Why do you
Speaker 1: think that intelligent, educated members of a progressive country feel
Speaker 1: they can get away with such a vile behavior because
Speaker 1: they've just elected a woman, They've proven their progressive bona
Speaker 1: fides ending one hundred and ten years at patriarchy. When
Speaker 1: the female governor General swear as in the female Prime minister,
Speaker 1: Australia has a collective lump in its throat. But then
Speaker 1: what happens. Moral licensing happens, and of course Gillow can't
Speaker 1: fight back, can't she? Until the very end of your
Speaker 1: ten years Prime Minister, you keep a pretty stiff upper
Speaker 1: lip about this. Yes, I think I did tell me
Speaker 1: about that, about your decision of how to handle it.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of it's innate, some of it's just me.
Speaker 1: And then I also took a deliberate decision that you know,
Speaker 1: if you looked like you couldn't take it, if you
Speaker 1: looked upset, then that would be used against me personally,
Speaker 1: but more importantly against women generally. That there would have
Speaker 1: been people muttering to themselves, you know, new women weren't
Speaker 1: up for this. You knew they couldn't take it when
Speaker 1: they're going got tough. Then, near the end of Gillard's
Speaker 1: time in office, a prominent member of her own party,
Speaker 1: the man she's chosen to be speaker, is found to
Speaker 1: have sent sexist text messages, and incredibly, her critics come
Speaker 1: after her. Gillard. They accuse her of condoning sexism because
Speaker 1: she's associated with this man. She sits in her office
Speaker 1: in disbelief. You know, I don't want to use any
Speaker 1: bad language to you, but I did have just going
Speaker 1: through my brain for Heaven's sake, and the word I
Speaker 1: was thinking wasn't Heaven's but for Heaven's sake. I cannot
Speaker 1: believe that after everything I've had to listen to, now
Speaker 1: I'm somehow going to walk into a parliament and people
Speaker 1: who have used gendered insults against me and now somehow
Speaker 1: going to try and give me a lecture on sexism.
Speaker 1: Like the injustice of this was just boiling in me.
Speaker 1: So that day in Parliament she stands up and gives
Speaker 1: her famous misogyny speech. It's addressed to her harshest critic,
Speaker 1: the leader of Australia's opposition, a man named Tony Abbott.
Speaker 1: Gillard just starts listing all the things Abbott has said
Speaker 1: and done to her and other women over the years.
Speaker 1: She lets him have it. I was very offended personally
Speaker 1: when the Leader of the Opposition as Minister for Health said,
Speaker 1: and I quote, abortion is the easy way out. I
Speaker 1: was very personally offended by those comments. You said that
Speaker 1: in March two thousand and four. I suggest you check
Speaker 1: the records. This is live on the floor of Parliament.
Speaker 1: If you watch the video, Abbot's sitting right in front
Speaker 1: of her. She's dressing him down to his face, and
Speaker 1: the longer she goes on, the more he shrivels and shrinks.
Speaker 1: I was also very offended on behalf of the women
Speaker 1: of Australia when, in the course of this carbon pricing campaign,
Speaker 1: the Leader of the Opposition said, when the housewives of
Speaker 1: Australia need to do what the housewives of Australia need
Speaker 1: to understand as they do the ironing, thank you for
Speaker 1: that painting of women's roles in modern Australia. And then,
Speaker 1: of course I was offended to by the sexism, by
Speaker 1: the misogyny of the Leader of the Opposition cat calling
Speaker 1: across this table at me as I sit here as
Speaker 1: Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking,
Speaker 1: make an honest woman of herself, something that would never
Speaker 1: have been said to any man sitting in this chair.
Speaker 1: I was offended when the leader of the Opposition went
Speaker 1: outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to
Speaker 1: a sign that said ditch the witch. I was offended
Speaker 1: when the leader of the opposition next to a sign
Speaker 1: that described me as a man's speech. I was offended
Speaker 1: by those things. Misogyny, sex season every day from this
Speaker 1: labor of the oppositions, every day in every wife, across
Speaker 1: the time the labor. This was twenty twelve, it was
Speaker 1: practically yesterday. At her last news conference as Prime Minister,
Speaker 1: Gillard says, what I am absolutely confident of is that
Speaker 1: it will be easier for the next woman and for
Speaker 1: the woman after that and the woman after that. And
Speaker 1: I'm proud of that. But forgive me for being a
Speaker 1: little less optimistic than she was. The difference between Julia
Speaker 1: Gillard and Elizabeth Thompson is that Thompson never had the
Speaker 1: chance to give a speech like that on the floor
Speaker 1: of Parliament. She went away quietly. Gillard got the chance
Speaker 1: to stand up and to be heard. And I suppose
Speaker 1: that's progress. But the underlying dynamics these two women faced
Speaker 1: are they all that different? A woman gets accepted into
Speaker 1: a man's world. She thinks that somehow something has changed,
Speaker 1: but nothing has changed. The men pat themselves on the back,
Speaker 1: and then they slammed the door shut again. Tony Abbott
Speaker 1: the man she eviscerated. He later becomes Prime Minister of Australia.
Speaker 1: By the way, here's a partial list of the countries
Speaker 1: that have had one and only one female leader. Opened
Speaker 1: the door, pat themselves on the back, close it again ready, Brazil, Germany,
Speaker 1: Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Latvia, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, France, Canada,
Speaker 1: and of course Australia. Makes you wonder about Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. She's not going to have it easy. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
Speaker 1: do us a favor and rate us on iTunes it helps.
Speaker 1: You can get more information about this and other episodes
Speaker 1: at revisionist history dot com or on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced by Mela Bell, Roxanne Scott and
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is composed
Speaker 1: by Luis Guera and Taka Yasuzawa. Flawn Williams is our engineer,
Speaker 1: fact checker Michelle Siroca, and the Panoply management team Laura Mayor,
Speaker 1: Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.