Do you think part of the vitril/hate aimed at Thatcher is because she is a woman?

[lesley33]

Okay Margaret Thatcher enacted a lot of policies that made a lot of people very angry and she certainly didn't set out to do anything to promote the rights of women.

But I am struck about the amount of vitriol that is still aimed at her all these years later. There have been male politicians - Norman Tebbitt springs to mind - who have been responsible for similar policies and have been hated at the time, but I never read about people still hating these politicians many years later.

I'm not sure if this is just because Thatcher was PM or is it because she is a woman and by behaving the way she did, she stepped well outside traditionally permitted female behaviour?

What do you think about this?

"But middle class complacancy is a different animal entirely. It is born of entitlement. That one should be able to have x, y and z wihtout too much fuss. It was middle class feminists of course who peddled the myth of having it all."

Thank you, wordfactory, for putting so succinctly the reason why I am unable to identify with middle-class feminism: its underlying sense of entitlement.

AFAIA, the 'having it all' myth was peddled by third wave feminists.

Lots of feminists, especially radical feminists, find 3rd wave feminism to be a sell out and very misguided.

I hate the 'having it all' thing because it ignores the factors that are holding many families back from pulling themselves out of poverty - lack of universal, affordable childcare.

Were it that simple, LittleAlbert.

The 'having it all' thing is actually hugely patriarchal when you examine it. Very capitalist too.

I'm not pretending it is that simple.

But there is plenty of research saying just that - and I am a case in point. Subsidised childcare has allowed me to work and to study. I bring home enough money to allow us to buy a bigger flat. In a few years I will be qualified for a reasonably well-paid job.

Obviously it's tough on the bankers knowing they are subsidising my daughter's nursery fees while shouldering great responsibilities.

You know as well as anyone that far fewer bankers are subsidising your child's nursery fees than MC families who themselves work very hard and have very little time with their children.

Wordfactory - what are you doing to ensure your children are more competitive. Teaching them mandarin etc ? I'm genuinely interested.

We all expect a similar or better living standard to our parents but some parents teach their children that it is only through hard work that you will achieve this, whereas other parents instill the disipline of hard work.

Its simplistic to blame middle class feminists for the having it all concept. This was a reaction to generations of having little or no choice. I do think though that we have evolved into doing it all instead of having it all.

"Its simplistic to blame middle class feminists for the having it all concept. This was a reaction to generations of having little or no choice."

Oh really? My MC references are women who lived lives of leisure in previous generations (degrees, SAHMdom and domestic servants) whose DDs thought they could add a high-flying career to the mix and all would carry on hunky-dory...

Regarding economic value, some posters seem to be confusing economic value and human/social value. They are vastly different. A derivitives trader is

Some jobs are just worth more in the economic sphere than others. So if you want to make money, and have the intelligence and work ethic to do so, then you go into one of those areas (areas of law, banking, business etc)

If you want to do work that is of more social value - teaching, nursing etc then you make a choice to earn less, but do more meaningful work.

Money talks but we all have choices in life

Feminism wasnt driven by women who led those lives of leisure and enjoyed them. It was driven by women who wanted choice and equality. There have always been working class women who did both jobs but they weren't on boards or in key positions and it was this that feminsts were striving for.

There are some people who manage career, home and family well. Sure its busy and involves mind boggling multi tasking but it is do-able. I would add that I dont think its for everyone.

I don't see all these the complacent nouveau pauvre on here or in rl. Who are they?

Three generations ago the most coveted careers were different. They were the ones that provided the role models which informed certain decisions. Now you go to Oxford and all these glittering degrees and minds and you can't budge for physicists and mathematicians wanting to work at JP Morgan Asset Management and the like. Most certainly the City.

People get stuck in a certain path, the world changes but those changes have a big effect on those making decisions about what to study, not on people who have being in publishing for 30 to 40 years.

And these people will probably urge their children to do corporate law.

Middle-class men are also to blame for the having-it-all concept. They love(d) to believe that their wives were doing nothing useful at home all day and love(d) the idea of sharing financial responsibility for the family (there being no domestic responsibilities...).

Marsha - try the (hilarious) threads on class ("what class are you?") that crop up from time to time. The nouveaux-pauvres gravitate to them like nobody's business.

Haha Bonsoir. Although..... it may equally be filled with the nouveau riche, aspirational mcs. Would be interesting to do a head count.

I was criticised on this thread for comments that the poster wrongly believed meant I was implying critics of Thatcher were naive because I thought that one's view of Thatcher may coloured by whether you were an adult in the decade before she came to power.

So, I may be criticised again now for having a view that was coloured by bringing up a family in the 60s/early 70s while working. But here goes...there was no maternity leave (just a one off maternity grant), no free or subsidised nursery places, no right to go back to work after a child.....none of the state support networks that are now accepted as a right, except for the small family allowance for each child.

I am not saying for one moment that the advances since then are not good, but honestly most people my age would snatch your hand off for the support available today. We take so much for granted now, got so used to the boom times that adjusting to what is still a high standard of living compared with many countries seems very difficult.

Yet I understand that what we are being asked to adjust to as a population is a standard of living comparable to 2006!

Have we lost a sense of proportion? Just asking.

I agree sports fanatic. People forget how recently things were much tougher than they are now and that we have just lived through a very long boom in the economy.

And yet;

"Britain's poorest families are turning down jobs or considering leaving work because they cannot afford childcare, according to a survey.

About 4,000 parents responded to research by charities Save the Children and Daycare Trust.

The study found parents in the UK spend almost a third of their income on childcare, more than anywhere else in the world.

Just over 4o% of families said the cost of childcare is on a par with mortgage or rent payments.

Of those families in severe poverty, nearly half have cut back on food to afford childcare, and nearly 58% said they were or would be no better off working once childcare is paid for."

My grandmother was a single parent with two jobs, my mother was left home alone after school until very late at night with the TV foe company (although she read me a letter she wrote aged 11 panicking about what would happen when the shilling ran out on the TV) Both my granny and my mother had/have anxiety and depression as a result of their experiences.

I am 45 and have very clear memories of life in a relatively affluent part of southern England in the 1970s. Life was different and a lot more modest.

The UK childcare costs are so high as we also have some of the highest standard of childcare in thew orld. Good quality childcare costs.

My mother worked in the 1970s and paid a teenaged school girl cash to look after me and my sister during the school holidays. Life was different.

what about Norway or Denmark?

And our childcare costs also because much childcare across the rest of the world is done by women, for free.

My mum used to put me in whatever school she worked in from age two. I also went to work with my dad.

Norway and Denmark are very rich countries with very high taxation.

And in countries such as the USAwhere lots of people use paid childcare, there isn't the same level of minimum standards as here. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, just that good childcare costs. And either the parent pays that or most of it, or they pay through high taxes such as in Norway.

Norway has lots of oil money that other countries don't have. It cannot be held up as a model for the rest of us, sadly!

I am often very surprised by the low grade childcare that my US friends put up with... but then, I have deeply engrained British standards of childcare and education and supermarkets that I mourn daily