“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” — Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall wasn’t being self-deprecating when she said that. She was being precise. And this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese handed us a masterclass in exactly what she meant.
At the Future Victoria Summit, a prestige gathering of business leaders, power brokers and the kind of people who use the word “stakeholder”, our Prime Minister took part in a rapid-fire word association game. Names were thrown at him. He threw words back. It was all very jovial, very blokey, very Herald Sun. Because of course it was. The event was co-presented by a Murdoch paper and the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, and broadcast on Sky News Australia. A trifecta so perfectly calibrated to extract the unguarded, unfiltered opinions of powerful men that you almost have to admire the architecture of it.
And then they said: Grace Tame.
Without hesitation. Without a flicker of pause. Our Prime Minister replied: “Difficult.”
Grace Tame, the Australian of the Year in 2021, survivor of child sexual abuse, tireless advocate for the tens of thousands of Australians who have experienced institutional sexual violence, the woman who helped strip away the gag laws that silenced survivors in Tasmania— is difficult.
And Donald Trump? Albanese offered a carefully diplomatic: “President.” Not alleged serial sexual predator. Not man named in the Epstein files. Not the only person in modern American history to be convicted of 34 felony counts and still ascend to the highest office on earth. No. Just: “President.” A descriptor of office, neutral and safe, the kind of word you’d reach for when you want to say absolutely nothing at all.
The contrast is not subtle. It is not accidental. And it is not new.
Since Eve was blamed for Adam’s lack of self-control, women who speak inconvenient truths have been labelled inconvenient people. Difficult. Abrasive. A diva. A bitch. Too much. Not enough. Out of her lane. Colouring outside the lines. The language shifts with the generation, but the function stays the same. To shrink women back to a size that’s easier to manage.
Grace Tame has never been ‘easy’ to manage. Good. We don’t want her to be.
She has spent years doing the profoundly ‘difficult’ — and there’s that word again, used correctly this time — work of advocating for child abuse survivors in a system that would rather they stay quiet. She spoke publicly about her own abuse at the hands of a teacher when she was just fifteen years old. She changed laws. She used her platform with discipline, with fury, and with moral clarity that most of us can only aspire to. She met with Prime Ministers. She stared down power. She wore it on her face when the occasion didn’t deserve her warmth, and the nation debated whether her facial expression was appropriate rather than whether the policies being celebrated were adequate.
On Thursday, Tame responded to being labelled “difficult” by the Prime Minister, writing on social media: “What a patronising cop out from a total coward.”
“Straight from the Scott playbook,” she said. “I’ll take the badge of honour, though. That, and being called ‘absolutely outrageous’ by the Israeli defence minister. Must be doing something right.”
Because that’s what we do to difficult women. We don’t engage with the substance. We manage the optics. We discuss the tone. We wonder if perhaps she might consider a softer approach, a warmer smile, a less confrontational posture.
We never ask the men sharing the stage to recalibrate their energy. We never describe Scott Morrison as difficult for his handling of the National Redress Scheme, or his government’s glacial response to the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Funny, that.