Margaret Thatcher's Gender Roles

Margaret Thatcher, from 1979-1990 is the first and only woman thus far to have served as Prime Minister for the United Kingdom and dealt with many unique challenges as a result of her gender. First, a female, showing an interest in a career in politics in the 1950’s was very unusual and often considered aggressive by both male and females. As the movie showed, she was an outsider not only to men but also to women.
As a female M.P., Leader of the Conservative Party and then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher had to contend with being taken seriously in a male dominated world. When elected as the Leader of the Conservative Party or when making controversial decisions, such as, dismissing ministers in her cabinet, many of her own male political peers and many people in the media, often made negative references to her gender rather than
Thatcher encouraged small business and privatization. Thatcher explained that the economic power that unions held needed to be brought back into the hands of the people. In the beginning, citizens thought this was a great idea, until unions began to lay workers off, threatening to continue to do this if Thatcher did not give them their power back. Thatcher’s popularity among the British dropped significantly. Thatcher remained strong and did not give in to the unions and their threats. Thatcher looked for a long-term solution that would change Britain for the better. She told her staff to be patient and that things would turn around and the economy would be restored in time. Thatcher proved to be right. Without Thatcher’s strength and ability to follow through on her vision of privatization, Britain’s economy would have spiraled downwards and Britain would have slowly fallen apart. Thatcher had a vision of what changes she wanted to see made in Britain and she would not settle for anything