Thatcher and women

Although I feel as though Freire refers more to the “oppressed” in terms of class struggles, I think his ideologies are transferable to other “oppressed” groups, for example, women. 

I am not a feminist! I dislike the label and would never refer to myself as such.  However, the Freire reading made me think about Thatcher (something I try not to do as it just makes me angry), and how she used, or rather didn’t use, her position to help other women.
 
Margaret Thatcher was the first and only woman so far to be prime minister of the United Kingdom, serving for 11 years and 209 days.  Thatcher fought her way to the top against a Tory party that was massively male dominated and faced huge resistance within the party.  However, during her leadership battle against Ted Heath, the party saw a number of everyday women sit up and take notice, many, I’m sure believing that with Thatcher in a position of power women would have a chance at real equality. 

But all she did was prove that it could be done.  In fact, less than doing nothing for women, she marginalized them more than ever, in both the workplace and within their homes and communities.  In fact, being a woman at the top made Thatcher less sympathetic to women’s rights.  As Thatcher congratulated herself on her massive personal accomplishment in the top job, she no doubt in many ways believed that she had done enough; if she could do it, then why couldn’t others? In an interview in 1982, Thatcher claimed that “The battle for women's rights has largely been won. The days when they were demanded and discussed in strident tones should be gone forever. I hate those strident tones we hear from some Women's Libbers."  

But this only showed how detached Thatcher was from the everyday realities of millions of women in the country that she ruled.  As she fought fiercely to succeed in a man’s world she didn’t relate her own struggles to those of other women. Thatcher became more aggressive towards women that any male PM has been since.  Like Freire says, “It is a rare peasant, who once ‘promoted” to overseer, does not become more of a tyrant towards his former comrades than the owner himself” (p.28) the same can certainly be said about Thatcher. 

This is not to say that women should not fight to gain positions of power, but one has to question how much these isolated instances contribute to the liberation of women.  The article below from the New York Times, which was published on International Women’s Day talks about just that.  Its critique is targeted at Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, yet as I know very little about her, I cannot comment on the writer’s personal views on Hasina and her policies.  What it does however touch on are instances where women have had a real, tangible impact on the lives of other women (it draws on an example from India) arguing that where women are in positions of power at a grassroots level, rather than as one of a minority in a central government, is when ordinary women feel the greatest impact. 

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/do-women-leaders-matter/?scp=1&sq=women%27s+day&st=cse

Not that I would defend Thatcher at any time, any place, ever – she is a witch, but her position as a woman in a system dominated by men, and her complete inability to see herself as one of a group of oppressed peoples, surely contributed to the ferocity at which she executed her power over women and other oppressed groups.  By fighting not to be seen as “oppressed”, Thatcher became worse than the “oppressor” in order to be accepted by the very people that she should have been fighting against.  "Their vision of the new man or woman is individualistic; because of their identification with the oppressor, they have no consciousness of themselves as persons or members of the oppressed class".  (Freire, p.28)