For anyone who remains in doubt that women in positions of power must constantly resist being sucked into a giant, marauding fatberg of sexism and misogyny, Wide Awoke gives you 60 Minutes: an Australian TV interview with New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. Or, as it might be hashtagged, #TheShitWomenDealWith.
Behold reporter Charles Wooley – referred to as a “veteran reporter”, which is supposed to denote experience, but in this instance could be read to mean a) that he should know better and b) that he has probably been getting away with asking “tough questions” for ages – saying he is “smitten” with Ardern. This seemed to be less because she is the first New Zealand PM to march in the country’s gay pride parade or because she marked her first 100 days in government by setting out a cornerstone policy to alleviate child poverty and more because he deemed Ardern “nice”. Or, as the interview promo put it, “young, honest and pregnant”, which suggests that growing a foetus in your belly is a cute personality trait, as opposed to, you know, the precursor to all our existence. And bloody hard work.
In July 1988, Pakistan's president, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, announced the country's first elections in more than a decade. His chief opponent, Benazir Bhutto, having said weeks earlier she was expecting her first child, did not see a coincidence.
"General Zia called the [elections] thinking that a pregnant woman couldn't campaign,” she told the BBC. “I could, I did and I won, so that disproved that notion."
Her exhausting campaign schedule was only momentarily interrupted when her son was born four weeks early. The decisive win proved that voters could accommodate the idea of a new mother running the country – though it helped that Bhutto was a formidable character from a powerful political dynasty.
Bhutto became the first democratically elected leader to give birth while in office when her second child arrived in 1990. She had the baby secretly, fearing opponents would use her absence to move against her. "The next day I was back on the job, reading government papers and signing government files."
She had been pregnant with her third child during political upheaval in which she was teargassed. “It was a pretty harrowing experience,” she said. “[But] I found that the old-fashioned notion that a woman who's expecting a child has to be bedridden was absolutely wrong, a woman can do anything if she's lucky enough not to have morning sickness."
Cringe as Wooley gushes that he has met a lot of prime ministers, “but never one so attractive”. Hide behind your hands as Ardern and her partner, Clarke Gayford, are probed about who does the laundry. Gape as Wooley gloats about catching a fish “bigger than the First Bloke’s” when he and Gayford, who presents a TV show called Fish of the Day, go fishing together – then jokes about Ardern being “the catch of the day” (which would be like Andrew Marr attending London fashion week with Samantha Cameron while profiling David, then making innuendos about his trouser measurements). Barf into your mouth as Wooley asks whether their baby, due this summer, was conceived during the election campaign. Yes, a prime minister in 2018 was actually questioned about whether she had sex with her partner on the campaign trail.
Wooley has defended the interview, calling the response “a bit Orwellian”. Meanwhile, Ardern has had to fend off the fatberg again, saying at a press conference that she was not “particularly fazed” and that it is not the first time this has happened. “Maybe I’ve lost all my sensitivity,” she noted with a stoical smile. Maybe she has had no other choice.
