OPINION: Somewhere out there in leafy, comfortable Aotearoa, a middle-aged woman is mightily disgruntled. She won't be alone – many Kiwis will be antsy that Jacinda Ardern will lead the country, and for all sorts of political and electoral-system reasons.

But for Kylie (not her real name), the thing that truly galls is rooted in a belief plucked from previous centuries; one that is seldom admitted to, but clearly still permeates 2017 thinking. It's horror that the New Zealand Prime Minister is a "girl".

I met Kylie and her husband (let's call him Brett) overseas just before the polls closed.

MONIQUE FORD/STUFF Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gets on with the business of running the country.

"Ear yo Kay-ways?" inquired Kylie (always a delight to hear the twang of a good old Noo Zild accent when you're so far from home) and we struck up a cordial conversation over drinks before veering into inevitably dangerous election-talk.

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Then Kylie offered her assessment of Ardern. There was no analysis of her performance, policies, economic plans – nor anything else for that matter. Not even the make-believe $11.7 billion fiscal hole or phantom tax hikes so beloved by Labour-baiters rated a mention. It was simply: "I'd be so embarrassed if that young girl was our Prime Minister."

123RF "I'd be so embarrassed if that young girl was our Prime Minister," said Kylie (not her real name). Even Brett looked horrified.

The genie was out of the wine bottle and Brett looked horrified. I probably did too, having never heard anyone write off any prime minister on the basis that she was female and 37. Not publicly anyway.

Should I have been so surprised? No. Remember, in the run-up to the election, Ardern was labelled a "pretty communist", shock-jocks tried to out-buffoon each other with questions about her reproductive future and online comments included: "Sorry, she's there for her looks, which stinks."

Meanwhile, that "young girl" from Morrinsville has been helluva busy. She's been facing down the Aussies over tertiary fees for Kiwis, gearing up to wrangle a ban on overseas property speculators in the TPP; vowing to require all rental homes be warm and dry; standing up to farmers over our country's filthy waterways; and she wants to halt the sell-off of state houses.

She stitched up a coalition deal with Winston Peters, for God's sake. That grown man, Bill English, did not.

Kylie has every right to rail against the new Prime Minister, but not on the basis that she's snatched a job that should have gone to a grey-haired man. And if Ardern's a girl, then perhaps what we've been missing for the past nine years is more girls like her.