Did julia gillard have the definition of womn takrn out
Executive summary
Julia Gillard did not “take out” a statutory definition of “woman” in a clear, single action that the available sources uniformly describe; reporting says words like “man”, “woman”, “male” and “female” were removed from the Sex Discrimination Act via amendments in 2013 under the government led by Gillard’s party, and critics cite that change when asking politicians to define “woman” [1]. Contemporary coverage and commentary focus on Gillard’s difficulty answering “what is a woman?” in media appearances — not on a single decisive legal deletion authored personally by Gillard [2] [3].
1. The legal change people refer to: amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act
Campaigners and some commentators argue that language referring to “male” and “female” was removed from the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 in 2013 and that those terms were not re‑defined in statute afterwards; that legislative change is attributed to the Labor government in 2013, the government that Julia Gillard led earlier, and is cited in activist materials discussing the need to “reinstate” definitions [1]. The advocacy site Binary frames this as a present political debate and explicitly links the 2013 amendments to the Labor government, saying the Act “contains no definition of biological sex – that was taken out of the Act by Labor in 2013” [1].
2. What the sources say about Gillard’s personal role
Available sources do not show Julia Gillard personally drafting or moving a single provision that “removed the definition of woman.” The Binary advocacy piece attributes the 2013 removal to “Labor” broadly, not to Gillard individually [1]. Mainstream reporting and biographical sources in the collection (Wikipedia, Britannica) recount Gillard’s premiership and policy record but do not document a named, unilateral act by Gillard that deleted a statutory definition of “woman” [4] [5]. Therefore, claims that she personally “took out” the definition are not established in the provided material (not found in current reporting).
3. The media moment that fuels the claim: Gillard asked “what is a woman?”
In 2023 Gillard was publicly asked to define “what is a woman?” and several outlets described her answer as long or faltering; the Daily Mail reported a “rambling, four‑minute response” and commentators seized on her inability to give a short, definitive definition [2]. Opinion pieces like spiked also used that appearance to argue she “pandered to gender‑identity dogma” and to critique her response as evidence of political confusion on the topic [3]. Those episodes have been recycled by groups pressing for statutory definitions, linking the public confusion to earlier legislative language changes [1] [2] [3].
4. Competing perspectives and implicit agendas
Advocacy outlets arguing to “reinstate definitions” frame the 2013 changes as erasing biological sex from law and as an urgent corrective [1]. Opposing voices — including commentators sympathetic to trans‑inclusive language or to more complex legal approaches to sex and gender — are present in the broader debate but are not included in the provided snippets; spiked and Daily Mail pieces present critical takes of Gillard’s answer and imply skepticism of gender‑identity frameworks [2] [3]. Each source carries an identifiable posture: Binary campaigns for legal reinstatement [1]; Daily Mail and spiked critique Gillard’s remarks [2] [3]. Readers should note those agendas when weighing the claims.
5. What the sources do and do not show — limitations
The supplied reporting documents: (a) a legislative change in 2013 attributed to the Labor government that removed certain sex‑wordings from the Sex Discrimination Act [1]; and (b) Gillard’s public difficulty in succinctly answering “what is a woman?” in media coverage [2] [3]. The sources do not provide a legislative text extract or a parliamentary record directly proving Gillard herself tabled or authored a clause that removed a statutory definition, nor do they show a definitive legal analysis of the 2013 amendments in context (not found in current reporting) [1] [2].
6. Bottom line for readers
You can accurately say the 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act—attributed in advocacy material to the Labor government—are the factual hinge point cited by those claiming definitions were “taken out” [1]. You cannot, based on the provided sources, show that Julia Gillard individually authored or personally executed a deletion of a statutory definition of “woman”; instead, the record in these sources shows party‑level legislative change and later media attention to Gillard’s public comments about what a woman is [1] [2] [3].