Did Thatcher look down on women?
Historians and scholars still puzzled by the late prime minister's viewpoint
After Margaret Thatcher died in 2013, then-president Barack Obama released a statement summing up the extraordinary life of Britain's first female prime minister.
“She stands as an example to our daughters,” said Obama, who has two daughters, “that there is no glass ceiling that can't be shattered.”
But Obama's statement was a bit of revisionist, rose-coloured-glasses history.
As binge-watching viewers of The Crown around the world are now learning — or relearning — via their television and laptop screens, Thatcher had little interest in advancing women or women's issues, let alone shattering ceilings.
It is a conundrum that surfaces in the first episode of season 4, when Queen Elizabeth II invites Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson, to form a government as leader of the Conservative Party. The Queen, a bit of a gambler, liked to predict cabinet appointments.
“I'm assuming no women,” the Queen, played by Olivia Colman, says. “Oh certainly, not,” Thatcher replies. “Not just because there aren't any suitable candidates. But I have found women in general tend not to be suited to high office anyways.”
“Why's that?” the Queen asks. “Well, they become too emotional.”
In her 11-plus years as prime minister, Thatcher appointed just one female cabinet member. Though she became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975 — the same year as the United Nations' International Year of the Woman — Thatcher typically punted when asked about the women's liberation movement.
“I owe nothing to women's lib,” she once said, leaving it to others to point out how marrying a wealthy businessman gave her the means — and household staff — to pursue a political career.
Once Thatcher acquired power, she relished in wielding it over everyone and everything — men, women, all of British society. She had no use for social structures that would uplift women or the working class.
Historians and scholars have struggled for years to fully explain Thatcher's disregard for women, but Beatrix Campbell, an English writer and feminist, said it can likely all be traced back to her childhood. Thatcher revered her father, a small-town grocer and politician, often telling stories about going to work with him. She never spoke of her mother, a housewife who excelled at baking. Thatcher never even mentioned her in an 800-page autobiography.
“The mass experience of women,” Campbell said in an interview, “will always be an experience of subordination, and she will not have it. She will not have it.”
The Crown, a fictional show based loosely on actual events, more than hints at Campbell's analysis in episode 4, which revolves around the children of the Queen and prime minister. In one scene, Thatcher's daughter Carol complains to her mother that she favours her twin brother, Mark.
“You disregard me, you overlook me,” Carol says, “and you favour Mark.”
“Because he's stronger, like my father was stronger,” Thatcher replies. “Yes, you're right. I did struggle with my mother but it had nothing to do with her sex. It had to do with her weakness. I could not bear how she was prepared to just be a housewife.”