I think these comments are quite true and need to be said because they mightn't be seen in the mainstream media. The potential damage done by the media's descriptions of women in powerful roles is balanced by the commonsense reactions of ordinary people such as voters and shareholders. I believe they see past the shoes and the spectacle frames and use their intuition to decide if they like and trust the person.
Maybe we'll see a trifecta - females as US president, Australian GG and finally, Australian PM.

It is sickening and disheartening that women's contribution to society is still measured by their hair, shoes, glasses, twinsets etc. Yet if they wore dull, staid clothes, they would again attract comment as being dull and staid themselves. Either way they are being treated dismissively and their contributions devalued. Is it because the media is still controlled by unintelligent males, unable to perceive that the world is moving on? Yet the number of female journalists surely indicate that decisions about what gets printed should be changing by now. How much responsibilty for lazy, unimportant stories should women be assuming? Quite a lot by the sounds of it. It is unacceptable from either gender.

I agree it's sad of our media to portray women like this, but the editors are not unintelligent people, they know what sells and that's their job. Have a look in any news agency, news stand and see all the women's magazines full of shallow sensational commentary. Show me any men's magazines that do the same, sell gossip, they don't exist.

We have a political system now whose main behavior seems to be the "daily spin battle", we have a PM whose press staff we know more about than any of his other advisors.

So what sells, to who is what counts - in this case, men are not interested in what women wear or how they generally look, women are.

While I agree that women are far more likely to be unnecessarily described by their marital/maternal status, I think you have picked the wrong examples in Quentin Bryce and Sarah Palin.

The first photos of QB after her appointment was announced were of staged pics with her grandchildren, all cutely dressed in matching clothes. She has always paraded her parental status throughout her career - the fact that she has five children, that she had the first while still a student, that she is a supermum who did kids and a glittering career simultaneously. Now she is using the grandchildren. I doubt if anyone is interested, and I'm sure if she had wanted to keep her grandchildren out of it, the media would have had no interest in them.

Palin has exploited her children too, particularly that poor baby which is lugged out for photo ops like a parcel, and usually seems comatose. She is the one who incessantly refers to herself as a 'hockey mom', and that she has five children.

If she was a bloke he'd be laughed off stage

Bennie, that's a very unkind thing to say about our Governor General! I know what you mean though, what a character. You have to wonder at a choice like that when there are so many other really worthy, less political figures, who could be role models, available.