Following the news of Margaret Thatcher’s death on Monday night, I immediately checked the comments in my twitter feed to gauge sentiment. I noted that the women were generally kinder about her passing than the men.
A male friend simply tweeted: “ding-dong”. It was indicative of the male view.
In an article in The Guardian, actor Russell Brand accused Thatcher of being an icon of individualism, not feminism. “All the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards” he wrote in response to Barrack Obama’s statement that Thatcher had broken the glass ceiling for women.
However the majority of women seemed to focus on Thatcher’s place in history as a trailblazer for women. Love her or despise her, she was Britain’s first female Prime Minister and therefore presented a leadership position to which women around the world could aspire.
What they weren’t saying revealed more about the desires of our gender than it did about Thatcher. By grasping on to her as as a beacon for female achievement and ignoring her record of government we are saying that we are prepared to accept failings from a woman that we would never accept from a man.
How comfortable do you feel about that premise? We fight for gender equality because we believe that when women finally reach the top of their profession or industry they will be able to perform at least as well as any man. Are we now so thrilled when one reaches that point that we are too terrified to question any inadequacies?
I am guilty of this myself. I stopped short of retweeting my friend’s “ding-dong” tweet because I didn’t want to criticise a role model for women. I know that I do the same when it comes to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop.
I am definitely more careful with my views about other women. A friend recently told me she believes women have become “ridiculously politically correct” in our quest for female leadership. Maybe she’s right.
But there is definitely an argument for supporting women in leadership roles until we reach a critical mass up there and the playing field is leveled. I am convinced that at that point women won’t need to over-compensate for our gender’s lack of leadership opportunity.
It just feels wrong to kick a gender while it’s down.
Do you agree? Are you less critical of female leaders than you could or should be?