Australia's first female prime minister has warned that we will only achieve gender equality if people get out and fight for it.

Julia Gillard has interviewed some of the most famous women in politics for her latest book, “Women and Leadership.”

The book, co-written with a Nigerian international development expert Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, includes interviews with a range of female world leaders, including former UK Prime Minister Theresa May, current New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Speaking to Tom Dunne on Moncrieff this afternoon, Ms Gillard said she is a “huge optimist” about the future but said people need to get out and fight for the world they want.

“The world doesn’t just change itself,” she said. “People have to get out and change it and that is one of the huge lessons and messages we want to share from the book.

“We want women to go on their own leadership journeys – whether that is politics, business or civil society or their local community or the law or the media or whatever it is for them.

“We want women to aspire but we don’t want to try and pretend it is all going to be fine. Women are going to hit days when they are being treated differently and perhaps lesser than a man would have been in similar circumstances, so we say forewarned is forearmed and this is a book to help you think through how you will react when that moment comes.”

File photo of the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard (R) with UK Prime Minister David Cameron (L) in Perth, Australia, 28-10-2011. Image: Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive/PA Images

She said the book examines several studies, including one carried out at Yale University which saw men and women making the exact same speeches to audiences, only to experience opposite results.

“They got these actors to pretend to be political candidates and they would say things like, ‘I am the kind of person that gets things done. Sometimes, I have to step on people’s toes to achieve the job but I always get it done,’” she said.

“From a man, that was absolutely fine but from a woman, the reaction of the audience was highly adverse.

“So it is telling you that there are still stereotypes in our head and if a man is seen to be forceful and commanding, we are prepared to go with that but if a woman does exactly the same thing, then because the stereotype in our head is one of empathy and nurturing, we find that conduct quite offensive.”

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaks in Washington, 18-04-2019. Image: ImageSPACE/SIPA USA/PA Images

Ms Gillard said all the women interviewed for the book spoke about walking a tightrope between strength and empathy.

“If they were too tough, people would think they were unlikable; if they were too caring, people would think they were too weak to lead,” she said.

“Each of them told their own story about their family life and how that combined with politics and of course, Jacinda Ardern has got a huge story to tell there, being the second woman in the world to have a baby in office.”

She said she does not believe that men and women have inherently different outlooks and noted that the old idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus is “actually neurosexism.”

“I aspire for a world where we have true equality in all things,” she said. “Where men and women are coming through for leadership in equal numbers.

“Where a man can be a caring, empathetic kind leader and a woman can be a strong and commanding leader and we don’t put any of them in gender cages and say, ‘no you can’t be that kind of person because of your gender.’”

You can listen back to the full interview here: