So Woman’s Hour over on BBC Radio 4 has had a competition about Who has done the most to put women on the political map, of which one of the finalists was Margaret Thatcher. Loathe her or hate her, she still was the UK’s first woman prime minister, but is that enough to make her feminist, as he advocate on the programme kept saying? Of course not.
Thatcher merely profited from feminism and its accomplishments, without which she would not have been able to enter politics in the first place, let alone become prime minister. In her long political career she did nothing to advance feminism; in fact did more to harm it through her anti-working class, anti-welfare state politics. Yes, she was the first women to become p.m. and hence could be seen as an example to others, but feminism is more than just breaking the glass ceiling. If your politics are reactionary you don’t get to be called a feminist just because you were lucky enough to be succesfull.