"In moments of some stress and pressure ... I certainly did say to myself that I would not give those people the satisfaction of seeing me shed a tear," she said. "[It was] some iteration of 'don't let them get you down'."
Gillard also revealed her reasons for making her famous "misogyny" speech in Parliament last year in which she stared down then Opposition leader Tony Abbott, now the Prime Minister, telling him: "I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not." The speech made global headlines and is set to go down as one of the defining moments of her leadership.
Gillard said she had initially decided after becoming Prime Minister that she would not highlight her gender but soon discovered that it was becoming a "burden" and a source of vitriol rather than a benefit. To roaring applause, she said the catalyst for the speech was the claim by Abbott, who has long been criticised as hostile to women, that she was sexist.
"I thought, 'after everything I've had to see on the internet, after all the gendered abuse that I've seen in newspapers, that has been called at me across the dispatch box, now of all things I've got to listen to Tony Abbott lecture me about sexism'," she said.
Gillard quit politics at the election last month and plans to write a political memoir. She has taken an honorary role at Adelaide University and will work as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Despite recent claims by a women's magazine, she revealed that she has not split with her long-time partner, Tim Mathieson.
