When women refuse to soften their demands on violence, inequality and unpaid labour, the response is often to question their temperament rather than the broken system they are challenging.

In politics, language is never accidental.

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese referred to Grace Tame as “ difficult,” even briefly, even if later he tried to pull back, it was not a stray remark. It was an act of political positioning. Across governments and across party lines, when women refuse to soften their demands, power responds not by interrogating the substance of what they are saying, but by assessing their temperament.

Comfortable power does not like difficult women.

Under a previous Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, Grace Tame was publicly scrutinised for failing to smile at a formal event. Her facial expression became national commentary. Her refusal to perform warmth for power was framed as disrespectful.

Different Prime Ministers. Different moments. The same reflex.

Across the political divide, when a woman refuses to comply with the emotional script expected of her, she becomes the problem.

The timing matters.

This is a government under pressure on gendered violence. A government navigating rising public anger about women being killed at a rate of roughly two per week. A government aware that economic inequality between men and women remains structurally embedded, not symbolically resolved.

And in that context, a woman who refuses to moderate her urgency is described as difficult.

Let us examine what women are being “difficult” about.

Women in Australia are being murdered by current or former partners at a rate that would constitute a national emergency in any other policy domain. If two bridges collapsed each week, emergency legislation would follow. If two cabinet ministers resigned weekly under corruption allegations, there would be an immediate crisis response.

But two women murdered a week becomes commentary.

Women earn less than men across their working lives. The gender pay gap compounds into lower superannuation, reduced economic independence, and heightened vulnerability in older age. Older women are the fastest-growing cohort of homelessness in this country. That is not a lifestyle anomaly. It is policy architecture.

Women perform the majority of unpaid labour. They raise children, manage households, care for ageing parents, reduce paid hours, and absorb the economic penalty of care so that the broader system continues to function.

These are not cultural irritations. They are political decisions embedded in taxation, childcare policy, wage structures, housing affordability and superannuation design.

So when women refuse to be polite about these realities, the discomfort is political.

Calling a woman “difficult” performs a pivot. It reframes structural critique as personal temperament. It shifts the focus from governance to tone. It turns a demand for redistribution into a question of personality.

This is how power protects itself.

And it does not matter which side of politics holds office. The instinct is bipartisan. When confronted by women who insist on structural change rather than symbolic engagement, the reflex is containment.

Tone becomes the story. Delivery becomes the issue. The woman becomes “hard to manage.”

Manageable women are easier to incorporate into the status quo. Difficult women threaten it.

History is instructive.

Equal pay did not come from compliance. Workplace protections did not arise because women were agreeable. Public reckoning on sexual violence did not occur because survivors moderated their tone.

Change has never come from women prioritising likeability over leverage.

There is a stark asymmetry in political vocabulary. Male politicians who are forceful are described as strong. Those who refuse compromise are principled. Those who dominate debate are decisive.

Women occupying similar space are described as difficult.

That is not accidental. It reflects whose authority is assumed and whose must remain conditional.

There is another layer here.

I have been called difficult.

Women who organised mass protests were called difficult. Women who refused to accept apologies as reform were called difficult. Women who demanded structural change rather than symbolic proximity to power were called difficult.

What that word really signals is non-compliance.

Change does not come from compliance. It comes from sustained pressure. It comes from women who are prepared to be inconvenient, to disrupt comfort, to risk reputation.

If the price of naming structural inequality is being labelled difficult, then difficulty is not a flaw. It is a political position.

In the current climate, the expectation that women remain measured while two women a week are killed is not neutral. It is an instruction to prioritise male political comfort over female safety.

We are told to be constructive. To appreciate complexity. To understand budget limitations. To celebrate incremental reform.

Incrementalism has not ended violence. Politeness has not closed the economic gap. Gratitude has not redistributed unpaid labour.

So the question is not whether women are difficult.

The question is why leaders across the political spectrum still default to disciplining women’s tone rather than redistributing power.

Power is rarely unsettled by civility. It is unsettled by women who understand how it works and refuse to perform compliance while inequality persists.

If women demanding safety, economic parity, and structural reform are described as difficult, perhaps that descriptor tells us less about women and more about a political culture that remains more comfortable controlling women than confronting the systems that disadvantage them.

We are not difficult.

We are done absorbing the cost quietly.

If demanding that women stop being killed, stop being underpaid, and stop subsidising the economy with unpaid labour makes us difficult, then difficulty is the least of this nation’s problems. The real problem is a political culture more invested in managing women than redistributing power.