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Want to Write a Guest Post for Women and ...The Iron Lady
But I must admit that I am conflicted about this film. There is no doubt that Margaret Thatcher made great strides for women in politics because she broke down gender boundaries and proved a woman could be as tough or tougher than the guys, but at the same time we can't forget that Margaret Thatcher was not known for being a part of the sisterhood - far from it.
The film in deciding to focuses on the gender barriers hopes that her breakthroughs will trump the rest of her horrific political views. But it just doesn't work. Gender is just one piece of the puzzle, it's not the whole thing. That's always been one of the biggest issues for me related to women in leadership positions -- just because you have a vagina doesn't make you a feminist. (ie Sarah Palin) As we said at White House Project where I worked a decade ago - it's not the gender, it's the agenda.
The film is told in flashbacks from the perspective of Thatcher who is currently suffering from dementia. Certain things happen which cause her to recall significant moments from years ago. The screenwriter Abi Morgan has created a film that is fiction but based on real life events. There is no doubt that Margaret Thacher accomplished many things no woman did in her time. You see how she learned her conservative politics at her father's feet (he was a grocer and also the mayor of Grantham) and how committed she was to going into politics (after she studied physics at Oxford.) She told Dennis Thatcher the man she was to marry (and their loving relationship is one of the humanizing pieces of her in the film) that she would never be a woman in the kitchen washing cups like her mother. And she wasn't.
No matter how many barriers she kicked down, Margaret Thatcher was still a product of her generation. She went to Parliament at a time when there were hardly any women, and from what I can tell, she liked it that way. To heighten the gender issues there is a hardly another woman in the film aside from her daughter who while taking care of her mom seems to earn her wrath because she is there and not her twin brother (whom mom clearly likes better.)
Thatcher took her duty to public service very seriously and worked her way up into leadership. You see how she takes her supposed deficits in being a woman and makes them into assets. There are some fun scenes where you really get a sense that this woman was alone in a sea of men (we know that is exaggerated and that there were other women MPs.) She learns to talk differently, loses her hats, and gets a helmet head haircut all done to be taken more seriously. Those are things no young woman today could believe would be necessary. But that's the way it was, and remember it's 20 years since Thatcher was in power and no other woman has gotten close.
We live in a world where seeing movies about older women and movies about women in power are few and far between. This movie has both, and for that reason I completely understand Meryl Streep talking about how this movie appealed to "every feminist bone in her body." But because there are so few of these movies the expectations are quite high especially in a film that stars Meryl Streep. The reality is that just like gender does not trump agenda in politics, gender does not trump agenda in The Iron Lady either.
(Disclosure: I worked with the Weinstein company to invite women bloggers and women leaders to the film's premiere earlier in December.)
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3 Comments
Kiren | January 10, 2012 3:29 AM
I don't know too much about feminism other than that it really pisses me off when people say I cant do something cuz im female or I am expected to do something cuz I'm female. But I saw this movie and what I loved about it was the constant battle the character faced. Wow! female or no female, the odds were against her and she battled through it and THAT is inspirational! and Meryl Streep's acting was awesome.
Kathleen | December 31, 2011 2:24 PM
I haven't seen The Iron Lady yet. Still, I have a feeling that, aside from Streep's amazing performance, the film will do a good job of showing the gender and class barriers that Thatcher had to face, and it will do a fine job of showing the ahead-of-its-time relationship between Margaret and Dennis.
However, I also have a queasy sense that the film will do a poor job of showing that Thatcher could have never reached the top without the feminist movement. While Thatcher was building her career, there was a strong women's movement that was chipping away at all the barriers.
One part of that movement was the campaign for women's ordination in the Church of England. Thatcher shocked the world when she actually said that she supported ordination and that the Bible did not prohibit women's leadership in the church. That may have been the only feminist statement that Thatcher ever made in public but it should not be forgotten.
Robin Johnston | December 30, 2011 1:04 PM
I agree that Maggie was a hugely polarizing character, and doubtless one who became more detached from day to day reality the longer she held power.
There is also no doubt that in order to pursue her political goals she was quite happy to ride roughshod over the lives of many, many people.
But to entirely dismiss her political views as "horrific" is facile.