Anna Goldsworthy Analysis

Anna Goldsworthy writes in the introduction to her Quarterly Essay, that it’s never been a better time to be a woman in this country ‘on the surface’. Despite the hegemony of females to crucial positions within government, large business and greater education, women are still held to incredible standards in what Goldsworthy marks as an ‘image-centric culture’.

Before I read the essay, I thought it was going to be solely based around women in politics, but it wanders off into the general area of sexism and misogyny where she Goldsworthy starts writing about how the female is viewed in common society, and then further away into Gonzo porn, online culture, typically associated with teenage women and their image and how they are viewed online, and also how women may go out and correct their flaws by makeup and plastic surgery.

Goldsworthy begins her essay here with Gillard 's speech, now referred to as simply ‘the misogyny speech’, it was a hit out of Abbott and his associated endorsement of ‘sexism and misogyny’. She identifies that Gillard’s speech was a detour from the safer and more common female politician’s tactic of ‘cop it and move on’. Until the time of her speech, Gillard had always typically ‘risen above it’, just kept moving forward and doing what needed to be done, without specifying an explanatory notion of her life and choices, which

I believe the essay was a successful piece as a whole, and Goldsworthy does well by researching the topic rather in depth to a large extent, as well as putting together rather interesting and conclusive points to emphasise what she has accentuated throughout the essay. Goldsworthy also brings across a large variety of examples in correlation to sexism and misogyny, where in some cases I feel she runs off track in certain places, but this can also be used to give the topic a much broader spectrum. Finally, I think it was an admirable collection of the feminist discussion and social outlook surrounding women within