SYDNEY

THE fastest way to lance a country’s anxieties about women and power is to appoint a female leader. For the three years and three days that Julia Gillard was prime minister of Australia, we debated the fit of her jackets, the size of her bottom, the exposure of her cleavage, the cut of her hair, the tone of her voice, the legitimacy of her rule and whether she had chosen, as one member of Parliament from the opposition Liberal Party put it, to be “deliberately barren.”

The sexism was visceral and often grotesque.

There were placards crying “Ditch the Witch,” toys designed for dogs that encouraged them to chew on the fleshier parts of her anatomy, and, most recently, a menu offering “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail — small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box.” By the end of her term, on June 27, the prime minister struggled to be heard above the sexist ridicule. When she addressed this, she was accused of igniting “gender wars.”

To point this out is not to imply that Ms. Gillard was flawless: far from it.

Her biggest problem may have been the way she became Australia’s first female prime minister. Under the Westminster system, voters elect parties, who are able to change leaders at will. In June 2010, Ms. Gillard, then deputy prime minister, deposed Kevin Rudd, with support from other members of their governing Labor Party, ostensibly because of poor polling. “The government,” she said, “had lost its way.” It was the first time that a sitting prime minister in Australia had been overthrown by his own party during his first term. Meanwhile, Mr. Rudd never left the picture. He stayed in government, and last month — almost exactly three years after Ms. Gillard had pushed him out — he returned the favor, after polls suggested that the party would be annihilated at the coming election.

Uneasiness over the way Ms. Gillard came to power fed deep currents of misogyny throughout her time in power. (She remains a member of Parliament but will retire at the election.)