There he was, surrounded by his blokes, with a story about leadership of the Nationals and what will happen when Joyce finally accepts he is a poisoned hay bale and needs to be tossed on the compost (I'll stop with the tortured rural analogies now).

In the photo, there were circles around the heads of the prospective replacement leaders. There was Darren Chester with his halo, newly visible Michael McCormack, David Littlefinger*, Matt Canavan. Even Canavan, a senator, and senators can't really be the leaders.

And Bridget McKenzie, loyal Joyce deputy, who's dealt with all manner of mayhem since her ascension two months ago? Nothing. No ring of power. No gold star for good effort. Yes, a senator, much like Canavan, but minus big-noting.

When it comes to Australian leadership, women are handmaids.

It's BSDs** to the front, the toil of the loyal either ignored or unrecognised. McKenzie is the newest of these tireless women deputies and joins Julie Bishop and Tanya Plibersek. If there is gormless chaos at the top, make a woman the deputy but be sure she is never ever counted as  a possible leadership contender. And in the corridors of Parliament House or the pubs where you congregate, always whisper, "policy lite, not up to the job, weak". Because what you've got now is so good, right? Where are the women?

Whether it's casual sexism in the party apparatus or just plain old entrenched misogyny at work, these women get no recognition. Poll after poll reveals Plibersek as preferred Labor leader (there were six in a row last year) yet story after story concentrates on Anthony Albanese's leadership aspirations. They even mention Chris Bowen and Tony Burke. Who are they again?

Troy Bramston of The Australian, whom I find endlessly fascinating, wrote this last week: "Newspoll shows Plibersek, from the Left, to be preferred as Labor leader, with Albanese close behind. Plibersek, like Bowen, has shown total loyalty to Shorten. She has also proved she would make a good leader, but it is doubtful she wants the job."

Doubtful she wants the job? Because he didn't ask? Because she doesn't start sleazily briefing against her leader to every second journalist about Shorten's inability to get voters on side? Has anyone recently even asked her privately or publicly whether she would like to be leader? Please forgive me for fearing that these kingmakers (now there's a word) don't think people with vaginas and children have ambition - and don't forgive me for being enraged by that. Be enraged with me.

And what of Bishop, who, regularly slays Turnbull as preferred leader. What does she get? The chance to jog with Boris Johnson while Mathias Cormann gets to be deputy prime minster. That's neither fair nor right.

Australian National University researcher Blair Williams says we still have an expectation that these leadership roles are male and that the political space is masculine. "Women in political leadership? That's still seen as abnormal."

Williams also says the media still shapes what we think.

So is it the fault of my utterly fabulous male political commentating colleagues who are brilliant and clever? Well, maybe, but they are as blinded by the patriarchy as much as the next male person.

I spent a bit of time playing with searches on a news story database. In every instance, in stories published over the past four weeks, the men I searched for as possible leadership contenders (Albanese, Tony Abbott and David Littleproud) appeared many more times in stories when the word leadership was used than the women I searched (Plibersek, Bishop and McKenzie). These women are the deputies but they may as well be invisible when it comes to writing about power.

In despair, I called former journalist Chris Wallace, now a historian at ANU, researching political biography. She does not cheer me up. Conservative women have a tougher time than progressive women because their parties don't support women's rights; but she also says there is now a Rudd-Gillard-Rudd penalty for anyone seen to undermine their leaders and that penalises women more than men.

And the kind of aggression needed to seize leadership? "That kind of aggression is seen as acceptable, normal and praiseworthy in men and nasty and unnatural in female competitors. When men do it, it is seen as healthy competition."

Wallace says many political women have internalised a view of power that it's a bit icky.

"They have to want to acquire, accumulate and wield power to good ends – but women have to brace themselves against a ton of conditioning to do so."

When I finish talking to her, I start singing that old Kasey Chambers favourite, Am I Not Pushy Enough?

But then I wonder, maybe we should get men to change. Holding my breath right now.

*Yes, of course I know it's Littleproud but his amazing ascent reminds me of Petyr Baelish, of Game of Thrones, also known as Littlefinger, master of the coin and powerbroker, now dead.

**The term BSD was minted in 1989 by Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker. It's a slight racy term. As Urban Dictionary puts it, it is mostly a to be described as a dick or a big dick is a term of disrespect, yet, in financial circles, the BSD is a term of respect. I'd add politics to the realm where explicit, explosive maleness is considered a positive. No wonder Australians, the majority of whom are women, are alienated.

Jenna Price is a Fairfax columnist and an academic at the University of Technology Sydney.