The Iron Lady’s Legacy: The Unwilling Icon

By: Claire Parsons

If you asked Margaret Hilda Thatcher if she ever thought she would one day be one of the UK’s longest serving Prime Ministers she would have considered you delusional. The Oxford chemistry student, born in 1925, was an exemplary student from her very first day of classes. She then went on to study for the bar while she simultaneously worked as a chemist after graduation. Only after serving as a successful tax law barrister did she decide to go into politics. In modern times, Thatcher would be considered an early star, one to watch, a bright young woman in STEM with an interest in economic policy with the work ethic to match. She was everything the feminist movement of her era wished for her to be. This is, of course, where things get complicated as Margaret Thatcher was anything but a feminist.

Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister at the beginning of the second wave of feminism and it would last far past her tenure. As she unpacked her suitcase into Downing street, women across the world were advocating for an equal shot at careers and opportunities while a woman was sitting in one of the most important offices in the world. One of the most prominent slogans of the second wave was that “the personal is political”. As such, the election of Margaret Thatcher and the Tories she represented should have been considered a massive win for the movement. It was, yet in many respects, it wasn’t. Margaret Thatcher’s political legacy is divided on partisan lines, understandable for a politician of her renown. She would have said herself that a boring legacy of her tenure over the United Kingdom was never something that interested her. What is fascinating is her connection, or lack thereof, to the women’s liberation movement.

Prime Minister Thatcher was a force, not one to be reckoned with on the house floor or behind closed doors. Some of her political highlights included redefining the British Conservative ideology away from caution and toward reform, privatizing industry, limiting expenditures, and acting forcefully on matters of international affairs. Thatcher made deliberate choices to try and invigorate the economy by selling off government housing, refusing to buckle to large scale miner protests, and cutting back on the crowded government industries. These were classic and strategic Conservative policy decisions, decisions which would have required an exceptional amount of nerve, something Thatcher had in spades. Thatcher was more likely to be critiqued on the critically rising unemployment rates because of her cuts to industry than she was to be about the hierarchy of her marriage (although she was heartily criticized on both). This lack of focus on Thatcher as a woman put a focus directly on her policies, this non gendered perspective was policy that the second wave could point to, to ridicule the stereotypes associated with women. Thatcher’s policy, however, had nothing to do with amplifying her fellow woman, in fact, she cut back on things like childcare and only took 1 woman into her cabinet during her 11 year tenure.

It was clear that Margaret Thatcher, herself, was not a feminist. As the movement has noted after her time and office and after her death; women that break the glass ceiling are not feminist just by achieving. They need to make deliberate choices that amplify other women. However, the Iron Lady’s legacy might be indirectly feminist in it’s residual effect. This was a woman who took the country to war with Argentina over the Falkland islands. She served as the link between Reagan and Gorbachev. All while radically reforming economic policy against a society that stated she stood no chance at success in politics, a sentiment she once believed. Margaret Thatcher, while no women’s champion, is an example if nothing else and her legacy represents a woman ahead of her time. While her policies may be divisive and her style of governance deeply critiqued and examined, it must be remembered how gender neutral that approach to political analysis is. One that, in her time, would have only been offered to her male colleagues. It cannot be said that Margaret Thatcher did nothing for women even if the things she ended up providing were unintended and indirect. Regardless of her politics, Margaret Thatcher was a trailblazer and a woman in power. Although when you think of Prime Minister Thatcher, I bet you do not think of her as simply a woman and for that we should all be truly grateful.

By: Sydney Grad