Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Is being a 'strong woman' really such a problem?

Judith Collins has two weeks left as an MP and she’s given an exit interview to Audrey Young at the New Zealand Herald in which she says people don’t like strong women - obviously referring to herself.

Now, I don’t disagree with Judith that she is a strong woman. She’s formidable.

But I do disagree with her that people don’t like strong women, because what is Helen Clark if not a strong woman? So strong, they used to say that the softest part of her was her teeth - and yet she was elected and re-elected by the New Zealand public three times.

That’s more than Jacinda Ardern achieved and Jacinda Ardern is not what I would call a strong woman.

Now, look, I realise there are too many variables to ever make a truly fair comparison across elections like that. But if you did strip everything else out, you’d look at it like this: Helen, the strong woman, won three elections, compared with Jacinda - the milder personality - who won two and only really won the second because of COVID.

Judith Collins doesn’t explicitly blame the fact that she’s a strong woman for her poor showing at the polls when she led the National Party - what did she come in at, 24 percent or something like that?

She’s really referring to the fact that she copped more outrage for rolling a sitting MP for a seat in 2002 than John Key did for doing the same thing in the same year.

But just for the avoidance of doubt: Judith’s problem as leader of the National Party was not that she was a strong woman. In fact, that was part of her attraction at the time.

The problem was that she was up against Jacinda in the COVID election, which was really a hiding to nothing - and she was doing weird things like praying in church for the cameras and making comments about fat people during the campaign. Much as I might have agreed with her, that was not a smart move.

But I really wish that women like Judith would stop blaming their gender for how people react to them because more often than not it is not their gender that’s the problem - it’s something else. And by blaming their gender, they’re avoiding being honest with themselves and honest with others about what that other thing is.

More importantly - much, much more importantly - this reinforces to younger women that they’re up against it simply because they’re women, that being a woman, and especially being a strong woman, is somehow a problem.

It is not a problem. People like strong women. Most of us have strong women for mothers.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.