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Bishop backs women, not labels

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Picture: Marie Claire

Woe betide anyone who tries to tell Julie Bishop what she should say or do because she is a woman.

The Foreign Minister has a history of pushing back against expectations, whether it was assumptions that as a female lawyer she would practise family law or the notion that she should identify herself as a feminist.

"The more people insisted, 'But you must call yourself a feminist', the more I thought, 'Well, I don't. Don't push me. I will self describe as I wish'," Ms Bishop told Marie Claire magazine, out tomorrow.

"It's not to decry the feminist movement and it wasn't to suggest that I didn't understand the struggle women have had . . . or the gains and what more needs to be done.

"I am a passionate supporter and advocate of the empowerment of women and I don't see that as a contradictory position at all."

In an interview to mark International Women's Day on Sunday, Ms Bishop recognised that women were challenged by discrimination daily but believed the best way to break down barriers was "to charge through them".

"I try not to look at things through the prism of gender," she said. "I could spend a lot of time complaining about what has or hasn't happened to me but that's not who I am. Just get on with it."

Ms Bishop described her role as her dream job, a position she had quietly angled for since joining Parliament.

"It is such an adversarial environment that people are very careful about revealing their ambitions," she said.

"But I admired so much of what Alexander Downer did that I thought, 'If the stars ever aligned, if I was able to project myself into any role, it would be foreign minister'."

Her message to other women pursuing a political career is to have strong self-belief, take risks and not be pigeonholed. "Women need to be more forthright in stating their ambitions and I have to admit, in the past I have not done that," Ms Bishop said. "But you need champions and I think of myself as a champion of other women."

She said she felt responsibility because she was sometimes the only female voice being heard.

"There are others who look to me to advocate a particular cause or promote a particular perspective because I am a woman," Ms Bishop said. "If you are the only woman in the room, you can't share the burden and I embrace it willingly."