Margaret Thatcher: not a feminist, but damn interesting anyway.

On Monday night, I saw The Iron Lady with Danielle. In contrast to the (mostly conservative, mostly insider) people we watched it alongside, the reviewers on IMDB  and my favourite thought provoking Australian journalist, we both really liked it.

Meryl Streep’s transformative powers were in full force, the costuming was clever, and Thatcher herself is a fascinating character. I suppose I would have liked it more if there had been a bigger focus on her politics, but I think that fears that the movie – and accordingly Thatcher herself - will be viewed as the story of a “doddering old lady who forgets things”, as one panellist put it, are misplaced.

And as someone young and foreign enough that most of my knowledge of Thatcher is retrospective – as 24-year-old Guardian journalist Ami Sedghi puts it, “gleaned from disapproving parental murmurs, snatched comments and television dramas” – I felt like it gave me an insight into political life in 1970s and 1980s Britain, with garbage stacked up outside Westminster, mass protests on the street, and an ever present threat of terrorism (not so different to today, some might argue). 

The film has also reignited the question of whether Thatcher is/was a feminist, and whether capital-c Conservative women can be feminists more generally. 

To which my response is, respectively: no, she isn’t, and sure, I guess so. I agree with Cristina Odone that the left - whatever that means these days - doesn’t have “a monopoly on women’s lib” … although I disagree with her that “Tory feminism” is “a superior form”. (Say what!? This woman was a deputy editor of The New Statesman? Someone explain this to me, please!) 

A feminist, in my view, is a person interested in the politics of being female (my personal interest is in the politics of gender, but I’m willing to let people with an interest in women only slide here); someone who believes in gender equality and pursues policies and philosophies with that end in mind. 

Her war-starting, union-busting proclivities aside, Thatcher wasn’t a feminist for the simple reason that she had no interest in the politics of gender, little interest in pursuing policies with equality (of outcome or opportunity) in mind, and as far as I’ve read, little interest in the structural factors that contribute to inequality of opportunity or outcome. Not to mention that she notoriously said that she “owed nothing to women’s lib”.

But can other conservative or religious women call themselves feminists? Sure – if they believe that the policies they’re pursuing are the path to gender equality. And note well: that doesn’t mean you have to like them, or agree with them on everything (or anything, for that matter). 

There are plenty of issues I disagree with other feminists on. I disagree with Germaine Greer on trans people. I disagree with Naomi Wolf’s handling of the Julian Assange sexual assault case. I disagree with the woman I met at the Feminism In London conference who basically said that all men were rapists. Equally, there are left wing feminists who I think privately engage in ways that are destructive to “the movement”, despite agreeing with the views they put out into the public arena. Just as the left don’t have a monopoly on feminism, the right don’t have a monopoly on crappy politics.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that different women have different ideas about which policies will have better outcomes for women – or even of what “good outcomes for women” looks like. Men disagree on this stuff all the time. People within the same political party disagree on this stuff all the time. 

“Feminist” doesn’t mean “awesome person with perfect politics with whom I agree on absolutely everything”. Yes, labels matter - and I agree that they can be falsely appropriated for nefarious purposes - but what matters more is the substance of what we have to say.

Related: Does a feminist by any other name smell as sweet?
Australia’s next top Germaine
Melinda Tankard Reist and me

Elsewhere: Tory feminists: the true blue sisterhood (The Observer)
Margaret Thatcher: a feminist icon? (The Guardian)
A blue feminist trumps a red one every time (The Telegraph)
Women of Steel (NYT)
Red dress, blue dress (Final Fashion)
Phrase du jour: “the new Tory feminism” (We Mixed Our Drinks)