Margaret Thatcher - Feminist Icon?

yep, never happier than when we are waving flags.

Falklands conveniently covered up her lousing up everything at home.

I don't think not having the Falklands to use stopped the junta from committing appalling human rights abuse.

Which the leads me neatly to her long friendship with Augusto Pinochet.

Disgusting.

www.bakewelltoday.co.uk/news/local/thatcher_film_underfire_from_tuc_s_veteran_women_1_4126323

Says it all really.

there is supposed to be 500 years worth of coal in the mines of this country. i heard that not only did she close the pits/coal industry, but that she had the mines flooded so that they could not be easily opened again.

she was a dose of bad medicine that the country needed, i.e. pulling the unions into line. but too much of a strong medicine can be poisonous, which is what is was.

with hindsight, her invasion of the Falklands was the right thing to do as it stopped the fascists in Argentina using the islands as offshore prisons to abuse their oponents.

i agree with the poster who said that she, like David Cameron, was moved by spite towards large numbers of the population.

mrs thatcher is not a feminist icon in my opinion. she got ahead due to working hard and having a rich husband to support her. she disliked most of the people in this country. she would have little sympathy for you if you or a member of your family were ill, so i am not bothered if someone mocks/comments on her current illness.

her part in the closing down of heavy industry in this country is one of the reasons why we now have no manufacturing base.

Just catching up with this thread.

LDNmummy - did you see the film yet? I saw it at the weekend - I didn't think it did glorify her, quite the opposite. The trailers that have been on TV are a bit misleading I think.

Several posters have remarked that she was bankrolled by a rich man. Yes. Unfortunately, so were and are many others in politics, including on the left. In the same vein many successful businesswomen got a start because they were bankrolled in some way too, even if they've now paid the money back and are standing on their own two feet.

To take another example many successful female authors/journalists or indeed film directors (thinking of the film which has inspired this thread) are or have been supported or bankrolled by their other halves in some way too.

(By the same coin) a 'roll back the state'-type Tory might point to women on maternity leave and claim they are being bankrolled by the state

I say all this not as support for Margaret Thatcher but to point out, as others have, that some of what has been said here is not really Maggie-specific.

I grew up with a Thathcher government, she was elected the year I was born. Never once in my childhood did I doubt what a woman can achieve. What she did while in government will always be a hot topic for debate but the fact she got where she did shows women can be equal to men in the workplace - which has surely got to be a big step forward for women. So even though she'd probably hate to be called a feminist icon in my opinion she is.

tb - and it was Nigel Lawson who allowed employers to stop paying into pension funds at all. Calling it 'pension holidays'. On the grounds that pension funds had far too much money to meet their future obligations. Looks as if he got his maths a bit wrong now, doesn't it? Oddly enough none of the ministers or actuaries or industry figures involved are offering to put back the money that's missing...

Just a correction - it was Gordon Brown who removed the tax benefits of pension funds by abolishing the tax credit on dividend income, thus reducing pension fund income by 25%.

Also in the final days of the Callaghan govt, not only were bins unemptied, the dead unburied, there was also a tanker drivers' strike. Filling up a car with petrol was damn-near impossible unless you were known at the garage. Also bakers' strikes, and every economic decision ostensibly taken by the government had to be agreed with the IMF first.

Some might argue that she was a psychopath as she felt no remorse or guilt.

It's funny how the caring, sharing left are always so compassionate towards those who don't share their views 100 per cent

She was quite evil imo...feminist icon my arse...

Knew this would happen. They make a Hollywood film to glorify and a past Tory leader in order to bring some shine to the new Tory government in a time when their popularity may be waning.

I wouldn't be surprised if Cameron commissioned the damn thing.

What I find puzzling is that both men and women who are not feminists often say, "feminists don't want equality, they actually want to be better / have more / be superior to men". And we feminists always say it is not about women being better, it is always only about equality.

But Margaret Thatcher challenges that assertion because she was a woman who proved herself the equal of men....in going to war, being traditionally tough, sending servicemen into danger, promoting men based on them being men, sidelining women etc etc etc.

And yet, I cannot bring myself to describe her a feminist icon. And yet, she proved women are equal to men in leadership.

It has really made me think about what I do mean by feminism. I think now that it is not about pure equality but also about prioritising women's issues and needs.

How can a woman who has lead quite a privaledge life, that was famous to handing out the economic medicine. Taking away the tax benefits of pension funds and removing the restrictions of movement of money out of the uk. Thus making it harder for the working class in the uk making life alot harder for us working mums be seen as our icon?

Her government had a right go at single mothers - never fathers, of course. Strangely she never fessed up that she was Denis's second wife. I don't think he had any children, but she behaved as if divorce was a dirty word - highly hypocritical.

Thatcher got where she did because she could.

Part cobra personality, sure: but being wealthy was also necessary.

She took an economy with a strong manufacturing base and industrial relations problems, and destroyed the economic base to get rid of the industrial relations problems. That was fucking stupid. The finance-based smoke-and-mirrors economy she replaced it with is the real sickness.

She herself said she owed nothing to women's lib.

An icon to some, not so to most. Feminist icon? I think not. She reached the top, sure - bankrolled by a rich man.

Whether you like her or not and I don't she was the most important PM she has revolutionised politics in Britain and showed remarkable strength and courage to overcome the odds and become PM. This does make her a feminist icon in my opinion as she broke down the door to an otherwise male only position.

No chance, how can somebody who ruined the lives of many of her own people be an icon? She is famous but for not many good reasons... much like a Dictator is infamous!

She is definitely an icon she turned around the British economy which in the 1970s was almost universally called "the sick man of Europe", into one of the strongest in Europe. She didn't destroy industries she just stopped subsidising uncompetitive and unproductive ones. Endlessly susidising backward industries is lunacy of the highest order and the reforms she made should have been done 10 years before she came to office but Callaghan and Heath were too weak to make the necessary changes.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/1960-radicalisation.htm

10 million days lost to strikes in 1970 alone - closed shop rules, demarcation disputes, many wildcat strikes with flying pickets - even the TUC could not control the unions. The unions, not the democratically elected Labour government, were running the country in the mid and late 70s. Businesses - not directly involved at all with the industries involved were going bankrupt because of knock on effects of strikes.......without the IMF the country would have been bankrupted. The unions, sadly, were the architect of their own downfall and as responsible as the Government for the destruction of much industry (and I say that as a former union member).

They were disastrous times to live through - a different world and in no way comparable to the 80s and 90s.

It couldn't go on and this is why Thatcher acted as she did. (And there were many things she did that I found indefensible and hubris brought her down in the end). But in the early days she did what she had to do.

It could easily have been a male PM who took the action she did but I still say that the level of visceral hatred - not just on this board - but on many message boards - would not have been quite so high had she been a man.