Former prime minister Julia Gillard says the "vile sewer of misogyny" that persists on social media is among the main barriers to gender equality in contemporary Australia.
A decade on from her famous "misogyny speech", Ms Gillard has reflected on the state of affairs today compared to what it was in 2012.
Speaking to ABC Radio Adelaide's Breakfast program, the nation's only female prime minister gave a mixed assessment of Australia's trajectory, identifying areas for improvement as well as signs of progress.
"I'm always anxious to see more, so in some ways I guess my surprise is, 'Why aren't we further along?' given how long we've been talking about gender equality," Ms Gillard told presenters Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz.
"There are still barriers there — I mean, it's not easy from the perspective of work and family life.
"Social media continues to be a vile sewer of misogyny, so there are still things to do."
But as evidence of change – and in the wake of the wave of "teal independents" – Ms Gillard pointed to the strong showing of female candidates during the last federal election campaign.
"I think much of it was shaped around women's voices, women's policies, so that's all to the good," she said.
"I do think we are having the right conversation now, that sexism gets called out when it happens.
"I think it's impossible to imagine a woman in politics today being called some of the things that I was called without a huge wave of public reaction and backlash."
'A kind of anthem'
The 10th anniversary of the speech has been marked by the publication of the book Not Now, Not Ever, a collection of articles and essays edited by Ms Gillard.
It includes the text of her speech, which Ms Gillard said was largely improvised and "wasn't planned at all".
She said she had been pleasantly surprised by the speech's ongoing resonance as an "anthem" of sorts.
"I knew that it was a weighty speech," she said.
"But I had no inkling it was going to travel beyond the parliament the way it has.
"It's become a kind of anthem, a kind of track that people go to when they want to pump themselves up.
"Women still know that they're navigating a very gendered world."
'Given in the flow'
Ms Gillard admitted she had never rewatched the entire oration, preferring to preserve her own memories of the day as they are.
"I haven't ever thought to myself, 'Gee, I wish I'd picked a different word or done a different thing,'" she said.
"It was a speech kind of given in the flow.
"It's come to mean something to people and that's kind of enough for me."
More broadly, Ms Gillard reflected on parliamentary and political culture and how parliament should strive to be an example for the rest of the nation to follow.
"Democracies are places of debate, so parliament needs to lead that, but we can probably do it in a different and more inclusive style," she said.
"When I first went into the parliament, I really wanted to show that a woman could not only survive but thrive in that rough-and-tumble environment, and from time to time dominate it."
