Currently: Promoting the second volume of his memoirs.

My mother, Margaret, was the treasure of my early life. I was brought up in a single-parent family as my father, Bert, died following a car accident when I was 11. Mum was always there when I fell off the horse at our dairy farm in Eumundi, on the Sunshine Coast, which I often did.

A child of the Depression, Mum had no formal education beyond grade eight. But she read, and worked hard on her handwriting. She also retrained as a nurse. Her dream was for me, the youngest of her four children, to attend university.

One day, Mum showed me a newspaper article about China entering the United Nations. She declared it would change the world. That was in 1971. I was 13. I dutifully read it and began to ask questions about this strange country.

My first kiss was in high school. Like any young man, I was utterly surprised when it was reciprocated.

I met my wife, Thérèse Rein, at the Australian National University during orientation week. I thought she was a bit of all right, so I went to her breakfast table and struck up a conversation: "Have you read The Communist Manifesto?" We roamed around in the same bunches of friends, but it took me several years to summon the courage to ask her out.

The culture of blokes in rural Queensland was never to admit to emotions. Showing them was a sign of weakness. Thérèse is a trained psychologist, and through her I learnt that emotions are natural, normal and real, that they need to be understood and respected, which wasn't part of my natural upbringing.

Like Thérèse, my daughter Jessica is a deeply loving person. She's cared for me during the ups and downs of political life. Given the entrenched prejudices in Australian society about the role of women, I feel enormous pride at what she's achieved as a lawyer, writer, businesswoman and now a company board member.

I met Julia Gillard at the House of Representatives in 1998. A fellow newly elected MP, Julia struck me as confident, bright, hard-working and ambitious. She also has a wicked sense of humour – a bit like me, actually.

During her time as Prime Minister, Julia copped a bucket load of sexism. The image in 2011 of Tony Abbott standing in front of a sign that said "Ditch the witch" with some sort of misogynist pride can never be erased from my mind. He used to give Thérèse the creeps.

I was in parliament when Julia made the famous misogyny speech, which I thought was fantastic. Julia and I may have massive differences, but I felt really proud of her.

Loading

What Julia experienced relates to less-talented blokes who feel emasculated by powerful women. I didn't grow up with powerful men. I grew up with my mum, older sister Loree, my wife and my daughter. Powerful women are normal to me.

I've been a Hillary Clinton fanmy entire life, of her intellectual capabilities and prodigious hard work. When I lost the Labor Party leadership in 2010, Thérèse and I went to Washington for a break. By that time Hillary was Secretary of State. She invited me to the State Department. I went into her private office, where she kicked off her shoes, stuck her feet on the couch, opened a bottle of pinot gris and said, "Okay, let's talk about what happened." She was being humane, as a person who has been at the political coalface.

Australian politics has become rough and violent for women. The misogyny seen in the Liberal Party's rejection of Julie Bishop in August was appalling. It says a lot that someone as talented as Julie, who'd have offered competition at the next federal election, was summarily rejected. She is a friend. I hope she stays on.

I was proud to have Julia Gillard as Deputy Prime Minister, proud to have appointed Quentin Bryce as Governor-General. A third of my cabinet were women. I appointed Penny Wong – female, Chinese-Australian and gay – as minister for climate change. A few of the boys asked if I knew what I was doing. I replied that I knew precisely what I was doing: appointing the smartest person in the parliament to the role.

The great thing about the next generation of Australians is that they are increasingly gender-blind. This makes the prospect of a second female prime minister more normal.

The PM Years by Kevin Rudd (Macmillan Australia) is out now.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale November 25.