One name always crops up in discussions about what women bring to politics: Margaret Thatcher. Love her or loathe her – and the middle ground I occupy is noticeably underpopulated – she was one of the most successful politicians of the twentieth century. She won three successive general elections and left a party that, after ejecting her as leader for fear of electoral defeat, went on to win one more. She galvanised the UK and its moribund economy, at a cost that explains the enduring anger she still evokes, levied on traditional industry and every Briton on the sharp end of the history she was making. She speeded the end of the Cold War, recognising in Mikhail Gorbachev a different kind of Soviet leader. ‘I like Mr Gorbachev. We can do business together,’ she said. They did.
She showcased female potential. Yet her ghost is most often summoned to demonstrate that female leaders do not invariably promote female interests. ‘I owe nothing to women’s lib,’ she insisted, and during 11 years in office she made sure that women’s lib owed little directly to her. She rejected the idea that government should help mothers to return to work, telling the BBC she did not want Britain turned into ‘a crèche society’. She appointed only one woman to any of her Cabinets. Baroness Young held a minor portfolio as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for two years, and came to the role with a sniggering nickname that spoke to the disquiet of men in Westminster and the media at seeing women rise: ‘Old Tin Knickers’.
Young’s boss inspired a more respectful variation on this theme, but one reflecting a similar unease about female power. ‘The Iron Lady’ lived up to the soubriquet, tempered to a steely obstinacy by years of fighting her way into rooms full of patronising, posh men, and then presiding at conference tables with more of the same. An essay by academic Rosabeth Moss Kanter, published in 1977, two years before Thatcher first entered Downing Street, foreshadowed Thatcher’s leadership style. Kanter, now a professor at Harvard Business School, observed that ‘tokens’, members of minority groups in organisations, are made to feel uncomfortable about their differences and so try to conform. That might mean acting like the majority, or fitting in with the majority’s expectations of minority behaviour. Such behavioural distortions only stop when minorities reach a critical mass.10 Subsequent studies suggested that mass is reached at 30 per cent and above, but more recent research points to a greater complexity in the number and habits of minority behaviour.
What is clear is that token women frequently try to fit in by behaving like men – or, in Thatcher’s case, by out-manning the men. A computer analysis of Hillary Clinton’s interview and speech transcripts discovered that her language became more masculine – a parameter defined by linguistics experts – as she moved from being First Lady and up the ranks of electoral politics.11 This transformation may have hindered rather than helped her. Women draw criticism and questions about their competence if they show emotion – a behaviour deemed feminine – yet any women who conduct themselves in ways judged masculine are punished too. Leaked emails written by former Secretary of State Colin Powell described Clinton as ‘a friend I respect’ but then went on to list supposed defects that included ‘a long track record’ and ‘unbridled ambition’. Researchers at Yale investigating differing voter reactions to male and female candidates found that voters felt ‘moral outrage’ against women who seek power because ‘power and power-seeking are central to the way masculinity is socially constructed and communality is central to the construction of femininity, [so] intentionally seeking power is broadly seen as anti-communal and inconsistent with the societal rules for women’s behaviour.’12 For many women in politics, this creates the catch-22 described by Ann Friedman in a piece about Clinton’s travails: ‘To succeed, she needs to be liked, but to be liked, she needs to temper her success.’
For Thatcher, downplaying her force of character or pretending to match any culturally generated ideals of femininity was never a serious option. Occasionally her advisers persuaded her to give interviews in which she awkwardly described a domesticity that was clearly inauthentic. She preferred to ignore her sex, but the men around her seemed unable to forget it. ‘She has the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe,’ observed French President François Mitterrand, creepily. His successor Jacques Chirac whined about Thatcher during a confrontation at a summit: ‘What more does that housewife want from me? My balls on a plate?’
Veteran Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister Ken Clarke, forgetting he was wearing a microphone ahead of a TV interview with another former Cabinet minister, Malcolm Rifkind, voiced a milder version of this sentiment in a discussion of Theresa May that he did not intend for broadcast. ‘Theresa is a bloody difficult woman,’ he said. Clarke’s thought train continued to its obvious conclusion: ‘But you and I worked for Margaret Thatcher.’ Britain’s first female Prime Minister is the model by which the second female Prime Minister, and all other female leaders, continue to be judged.
Facile though these comparisons are, female leaders, as a class, tend to resemble Thatcher in one respect. There is less show-offery. Women more often appear to thrive on the exercise of power than the attendant publicity. Think how Angela Merkel compares to Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi, or Theresa May to her one-time leadership rival Boris Johnson, or Hillary to Bill or Donald. Thatcher never sought press coverage for its own sake.
There is a commonality between Thatcher and Merkel that is also worthy of mention: a background in science. When Thatcher entered politics, she forged a new path. The elite of society imbued their sons with the expectation of leadership, and trades unions provided an alternative training ground for political talent. Family ties delivered the world’s first female Prime Minister, Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike, to power and installed the world’s longest-serving female leader, India’s Indira Gandhi, in office. Political dynasties produced Aung San Suu Kyi, Sheikh Hasina, her predecessor Khaleda Zia, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, Indonesia’s Megawati Sukarnoputri, Argentinian Presidents Isabel Martínez de Perón and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Cory Aquino of the Philippines, and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye. Thatcher had no such advantages. She studied chemistry and went on to work in the field at the food manufacturer Lyons (where, legend has it, she helped to invent soft-scoop ice cream).
Angela Merkel found a calm berth in East Germany as a researcher in physical chemistry. These parallels are noteworthy because the duo also gained a reputation for the kind of evidence-based decision-making more routinely associated with laboratories than parliaments. Even so, Thatcher and Merkel will be remembered for big, bold projects rooted in ideology and emotion rather than cold calculation. Thatcherism held, at its core, an instinctive and visceral moral certitude that branded opposing ideologies as not just wrong but malign. Merkel’s pivot from cautious consensus-builder to passionate advocate of European engagement in solving the refugee crisis drew deep on her own experience. She too had been the wrong side of the barbed wire.
Germany’s 2005 elections ended in deadlock. Neither Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats nor Gerhard Schröder’s left-leaning Social Democrats, could muster a workable majority. Merkel consulted, forged alliances, held her nerve until Schröder withdrew, leaving her to head a grand coalition. She was not only the first woman to occupy the Chancellery, but the first leader of reunited Germany raised behind the Iron Curtain. As TIME scrambled late at night to produce a cover story, international editor Michael Elliott composed a headline that almost went to print before we noticed its double meaning: ‘Not Many Like Her’.
There still aren’t many – if any – like her, and these days you’d be forgiven for assuming that not many of her colleagues or compatriots like her either. Four successive state elections in 2016 saw the Christian Democrats lose votes, primarily