Barbara Kay on the “failings” of Margaret Thatcher (that is, not advancing the cause of women in a way that organized feminists would have preferred):
The “Iron Lady” is, of course, not only a sobriquet for Margaret Thatcher, but the title of the wonderful new Meryl Streep biopic about the former British PM. Bagnall’s predictable answer is that no, Thatcher was not good for women: “She did not pave the way for other women, as they had every right to expect her to, since she was one of them.”
Bagnall’s stated beefs are that Thatcher urged women to leave the workforce, and only nominated one woman to her cabinet. Well, so did unions of that era ask women to leave the workforce — to open up more jobs for men. And Thatcher’s appointments were based on who was good for Britain, not who was good for women.
Politically, Thatcher despised tokenism (“I owe nothing to women’s lib,” she once said), but it is true that personally she preferred men to women. This was made clear in the film by the non-judgmental tenderness the older widowed Thatcher lavishes on her negligent son (who rarely visited, but inconsiderately telephones her from South Africa at 3 a.m. English time) and the casual verbal cruelties Thatcher tosses at her attentive, under-appreciated daughter.
I think it’s Thatcher’s lack of fellow feeling for women that’s really bugging Bagnall and other feminists. How could Thatcher not like women if she was “one of them”?
I daresay it’s for the same reason most of us hold prejudices about the opposite sex. I don’t think most gender antipathy is rooted in doctrine; I think we drift toward doctrines that confirm our lived experiences. So in spite of (fictional) Thatcher’s protestations to the doctor attending her in her old age that she prefers “thoughts” to “feelings,” Thatcher’s bias toward men sprang directly from her lived experiences and the feelings they engendered (pun intended).
