Gillard talks of pressure she endured as PM

Julia Gillard. Photo / AP

Being called sexist after suffering abuse from all sides was a low point, but she faced it down.

Julia Gillard has spoken out about her "murderous rage" and her determination not to cry in public as she endured vicious personal attacks while serving as Australia's first female Prime Minister.

In her first public outing in Australia since she was deposed in June, Gillard appeared upbeat and buoyed by a strong show of support in a packed hall at the Sydney Opera House.

During a candid question and answer session, Gillard, 52, was asked by an 11-year-old girl how she coped with "all that horrible sexism".

The former Labor Prime Minister said one of her strongest motivations when she left office was not to give her most strident critics the pleasure of seeing her publicly cry.

"In moments of some stress and pressure ... I certainly did say to myself that I would not give those people the satisfaction of seeing me shed a tear," she said. "[It was] some iteration of 'don't let them get you down'."

Gillard also revealed her reasons for making her famous "misogyny" speech in Parliament last year in which she stared down then Opposition leader Tony Abbott, now the Prime Minister, telling him: "I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not." The speech made global headlines and is set to go down as one of the defining moments of her leadership.

Gillard said she had initially decided after becoming Prime Minister that she would not highlight her gender but soon discovered that it was becoming a "burden" and a source of vitriol rather than a benefit. To roaring applause, she said the catalyst for the speech was the claim by Abbott, who has long been criticised as hostile to women, that she was sexist.

"I thought, 'after everything I've had to see on the internet, after all the gendered abuse that I've seen in newspapers, that has been called at me across the dispatch box, now of all things I've got to listen to Tony Abbott lecture me about sexism'," she said.

Gillard quit politics at the election last month and plans to write a political memoir. She has taken an honorary role at Adelaide University and will work as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Despite recent claims by a women's magazine, she revealed that she has not split with her long-time partner, Tim Mathieson.