It hasn’t been a good few days for feminism in Australia.

Lame duck Prime Minister Julia Gillard, under fire from almost every level of society in the country for a number of perceived misdemeanours ranging from wearing too many designer clothes to basically having NFI (Aussie slang: no f*****g idea), kicked it off in a speech at the start of the week.

Poor old Julia, who you suspect probably wouldn’t be a bad egg if she ditched all that ghastly New Labour meaningless mumbo-jargon and simply engaged the country on the basis of her potentially genial personality and came out swinging with the windmill punches, as desperate people getting battered from all sides tend to do.

"Women aren’t given a fair go in Australian life," Jules said, conveniently ignoring the fact that she’s been high heid yin for the last three years.  "Too often voters are merely given a choice between one man in a blue tie and another man in a blue tie."

Painting yourself as a persecuted irrelevance is a dangerous tactic to employ in the early stages of any election campaign as voters might decide they couldn’t agree more, but there is actually some evidence to suggest that the Aussie media have trampled over Julia’s credibility far more than they would have done to a man in a blue or, in fact, any colour tie.

Later in the week, Gillard was asked in an interview with a well-known shock jock – otherwise known as ‘Tadger with Access to a Microphone’ – if her boyfriend (a slightly confused looking bloke in his late 50s who used to be her hairdresser) was gay.

This spurious and more than a bit preposterous allegation was based on the flimsiest of evidence.  So flimsy it was positively ethereal in fact, only really citing the fact that he used to be a hairdresser and hey, come on, what more confirmation do you need, mate?

Cobblers. Whilst there are undoubtedly more than a few gay blokes in the hairdressing industry, anyone who has seen the Warren Beatty movie Shampoo knows that being a crimper offers up countless opportunities for wild nookie with bored housewives, especially if, like Warren in the movie, you do house calls with your scissors and blow dryer discreetly secreted away in a holdall.

I’ve always thought there was a ton of potential for a Scottish version of Shampoo.  Imagine the scene as a sexy thirtysomething greets the arrival of the carefree crimper with the Adidas bag:

"Hello Warren. No doubt you’ll be needing your holdall."

"Well, yes I do, doll. But I’ll just do your roots first."

Labelling hairdressers gay aside, Australians by and large do have quite a macho psyche. Maybe it stems from the pioneering spirit of the nation, being outdoors a lot, telling it like it is, toiling without a hat under a belting hot sun, all swear words, tats and sweaty singlets. And the men are worse.

The politics of feminism, which is as complicated as the offside rule and range from across the board equality to Millie Tant style rages against the power of the penis, is rapidly developing a strong voice in Australia however presumably in direct response to perceived notions of unreconstructed, traditional Aussie male stereotypes.

Just the other day, the Australian Army was outed after a "shocking, repugnant and insulting to women" email was leaked to the press. Always keen to play the ideologically spotless card, the authorities acted swiftly, suspending the miscreants, many of whom it seemed were commanding officers, some even female.

"We will not tolerate behaviour of this sort," said the Brass Hat who got the gig to address the TV cameras. "We will not tolerate anything that damages the Australian Army’s deserved reputation as a caring, sensitive and progressive organisation." Caring, sensitive and progressive. Virtues which no doubt came in handy when they were engaged in hand-to-hand jungle warfare with the Japanese in Papua New Guinea during the Second World War.

Feminism, of course, is, like democracy, a word which means entirely different things to different people. Personally I’m always a bit suspicious of men who claim to be feminists but this might well be as a result of a bloke I knew who was one of the founder members of a group called Glasgow Men Against Sexism back in the early Nineties.

I wasn’t the only person who regarded this bloke as a bit of a self-righteous tosser, a viewpoint that was well and truly confirmed one night he got rat-arsed and bragged that membership of the group and subsequent ostentatious display of the GMAS lapel badge was "a sure-fire way to get your Nat at parties by the way..."

It goes without saying, though I’ll say it anyway, that I believe in equal rights for everyone, regardless of sex, race, creed, whatever. But to present men as ruthless perpetrators of war, famine and assorted wicked wrong-doing and women as soft maternal carers and sharers is surely as wonky as any other sort of muddle-headed, illogical gender stereotyping. And the notion that women are exploited simply on the basis of their sex and men’s need for gratification? Well obviously some women are. Some men are too. 

And loads of people, male and female are exploited in a humiliating, unacceptable manner every hour of day of every year of their entire lives. 

Open your eyes and check out the subjugated locals doing it tough as you relax sipping Daiquiris in choice holiday spots such as Bali, Phuket, Cancun, the Dominican Republic and Millport. The woman cleaning the flat, the bloke sweeping up around the pool, the people who empty the bins are all being exploited. By you, as it happens.

So, equal rights for women? I’m all for it. As long as it’s extended to the poor, the dispossessed, the de-classed, the uneducated, exploited huddled masses worldwide, regardless of gender. Though, on second thoughts, I’d draw the line about including members of Glasgow Men Against Sexism.