Margaret Thatcher was many things: a pioneer, a visionary, a trailblazer. But there is one thing she absolutely was not, and that is a feminist.
But that hasn't stopped many pundits from trying to paint her as exactly that. From the Washington Post's Alexandra Petri who called her a 'feminist triumph' to author Lionel Shriver who, in a piece as extraordinary for its misrepresentation of feminism as for its mis-remembrance of the former British PM, bestowed on Thatcher a sort of Greatest Feminist Who Ever Lived award even as she ridiculed the very existence of feminism itself.
I'm not going to dissect Thatcher's political legacy, I'll leave that to others more capable than me. What I am here to do is to strike down this belligerent notion — often put forward by conservative women who can't seem to understand that feminism is by its very nature a left-leaning ideology — that everything a woman does is 'feminist' simply by dint of the fact that it is a woman doing it.
This misguided notion — that every choice a woman makes is to be celebrated as a victory for feminism, because, well, hey, a woman made a choice — is diluting the meaning and effectiveness of feminism, enabling even women who are overtly hostile to feminism to claim the title of Champion of Women.
As feminist writer Clementine Ford put it, although 'choice and the ability to freely make it is central to feminist ideology ... it doesn't follow that all choices should be accepted as feminist acts and therefore given a free pass'.
Incredibly, Petri seems put out by the fact that Thatcher is not regarded as a feminist icon, even though Petri herself quotes Thatcher declaring, 'I hate feminism. It is poison.'
Shriver, meanwhile, simply states, 'if we had more feminists like Thatcher, we'd have vastly more women in Parliament and the US Senate'. Um, no, we most certainly would not. Throughout her three terms, Thatcher appointed only one other woman to her Cabinet. Compare that to our own Julia Gillard, who, in only her second term, made history by appointing six women to the outer ministry (that's 60 per cent), and three to the Cabinet.
Feminism is not, as Petri and Shriver appear to assert, about one woman breaking through the ranks and going where no woman has before. It is about acknowledging that women are still systematically marginalised, and actively working to end this discrimination.