Asked Tuesday morning if she believed the Liberal Party would ever bring itself to elect a popular female leader, Julie Bishop — giving her final press conference as Australia's first female foreign minister — delivered her response with maximum steel.

"When we find one, I'm sure we will."

Bishop has a timely knack for savage one-liners.

("How does it feel to talk to a man on death row?" Bishop was asked last week by the trouble-plagued Today Show host Karl Stefanovic, in an interview about the failing fortunes of her friend and leader Malcolm Turnbull.

"Well," replied Bishop with Arctic calm, "I'm talking to you, Karl".)

But what did this one mean? Some read it as a Pollyanna-ish vote of optimism for the future.

I don't think so.

Bishop loves to speak in code. She's an avid student (and part-time appropriator) of Madeleine Albright's legendary "pin diplomacy", in which the former secretary of state habitually wore brooches signalling her mood, or level of antagonism toward whomever she was due to meet that day.

It's no accident that Bishop was the cabinet's most enthusiastic user of emojis.

"When we find one, I'm sure we will."

I read it as one of Julie Bishop's chilliest-ever slapdowns — directed to her party and to anyone else who might listen.

Extended, I reckon it might read thus:

"When we find one, I'm sure we will. Of course, finding such a woman is never easy. I mean, realistically you'd need someone who's had a distinguished career before politics and then amassed a significant amount of parliamentary experience — say, 20 years or so, for example.

"She'd also need to have served in a number of frontbench roles — ideally in government. I don't know, maybe in education for domestic policy experience, but also a lengthy and well-regarded stint in foreign affairs wouldn't hurt.

"She'd need to have a good relationship with the backbench. Perhaps even have served as deputy leader!

"You'd need someone who hasn't lost their head during leadership crises plus she'd need to have a good record for hard work, and a record free of ministerial scandal.

"And she'd have to be publicly popular, electable and a good fundraiser.

"AND WHERE ON EARTH WOULD WE EVER FIND A WOMAN LIKE THAT?"

Julie Bishop, with her eventual replacement Marise Payne, during a visit to the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom in October last year. ( AAP: Yonhap News Agency )

'Someone should tell Julie'

This time last week, Julie Bishop was the most powerful woman in Australian politics, and the Coalition's safest leadership figure by a country mile.

How is she now a backbencher?

For professional women around Australia, it looks like a common story: Woman Works Hard, Is Good At Her Job, Doesn't Screw Up, Loses Out Anyway.

Sheryl Sandberg, in her widely-read book on women and leadership, Lean In, invented something she called the "tiara syndrome", in which women try hard, do the right thing, look after others and expect that at some point someone will come along and give them a tiara.

Which hardly ever happens.

Bishop has always insisted that she is not a feminist, and I seriously doubt that she would ascribe her fortunes in the past week entirely to gender.

And she'd be right. There are a bunch of reasons why Julie Bishop wasn't elected as leader last Friday.

One is that she was judged as too similar factionally and in her social policy views to Malcolm Turnbull; so much so that electing her would invite more destabilising from the "insurgents".

Another was that strategists among the moderates actively organised against her, fearful that she would come second in the Dutton/Morrison/Bishop race and turn the final vote into a Bishop/Dutton ballot, which they feared she would lose.

But here's the thing which became the most clear when Barrie Cassidy, on Insiders on Sunday, read out a leaked WhatsApp exchange between a sizeable group of moderates planning their counterinsurgency against the Dutton backers.

Julie Bishop wasn't even in the conversation.

"Someone should tell Julie," offers one participant after the group widely agrees that they shouldn't vote for her.

"I have," responds Christopher Pyne.

Would it happen to a man?

It's not the first time this has happened to Julie Bishop.

In 2009, the last time the Liberal Party tied itself up in elaborate knots trying to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull, the height of the leadership machinations saw Ms Bishop attend a crisis meeting in Joe Hockey's office during which a group of her male colleagues sat around discussing who would run for the deputy's role.

Mr Hockey suggested that Peter Dutton would run. Ms Bishop — stunned to hear her own job being canvassed as if she weren't even present — kept her counsel.

I cannot imagine these things happening to a male politician.

Cabinet's most enthusiastic user of emojis: Julie Bishop. ( AAP: Lukas Coch )

Nor can I imagine the sorts of reasons that are regularly advanced as reasons why Julie Bishop shouldn't lead her party ever being advanced against a man.

"She's a lightweight."

This one always seems vaguely to be connected to Bishop's taste for nice clothes. But given that she's not even the most sartorially fussy foreign minister in the past 10 years (Looking at you, Bob Carr, with the first-class pyjama fetish), it doesn't add up to much.

"She doesn't have enough domestic experience. Being foreign minister doesn't prepare you."

Never a whisper of this problem for Kevin Rudd, who had only been the shadow foreign affairs minister before he took the reins as leader and — ultimately — prime minister.

Gender doesn't explain everything

This is the problem for women in politics.

Their gender does not explain — as Julia Gillard so memorably observed at her own final press conference — everything about what happens to them there.

But it sure can bowl up the odd googly that men don't have to face.

Take the fate of Emma Husar, interviewed on 7.30 about the complaints from former staff that ended her political career.

Now, I don't know what kind of boss Ms Husar is. Quite possibly, she's difficult and demanding. Maybe she's even a nightmare boss. She wouldn't be Robinson Crusoe in politics, where peremptory and demanding bosses abound, and some even end up as prime minister.

But would we ever see a news headline about a male politician ordering his female staff to wash the dishes?

Sorry, this video has expired Emma Husar says slut shaming forced her out of politics.

And would there be quite as much disquiet about a politician who was a male single parent asking staff to help with the running of their domestic lives?

I'd check with the male single parents of the Parliament — only there isn't one to ask.

As for the allegation — since discredited — that Ms Husar had behaved sexually with a male colleague, well. Consider this:

The federal Parliament's youngest and third-youngest women, respectively, are Sarah Hanson-Young and Ms Husar.

In the past six months, both of them have been called sluts.

In June this year, Plan International released results from its survey of 2,000 young Australian women. They found that among 18-25 year olds, zero per cent expressed an interest in politics as a career.

You do the maths.