First off, I am no fan of Thatcher or her policies. But I am fascinated by how she navigated being the first woman leader of a major political party in Britain and translated that into lasting electoral success. As a student of gender in elections, her success is a useful but troubling case. In many ways, Thatcher was successful by completely separating herself from "women politicians" as a class of individual.
The election in 1979 that brought Margaret Thatcher to power was less directly about Thatcher’s gender than one might think. Certainly, it was less than the Clinton-Trump 2016 Presidential election. The Labour PM Thatcher defeated was described by Caryl as "a master at sardonically implying that whatever the leader of the opposition said was made even sillier by the fact that it was said by a woman.”
But the principal reaction over Thatcher’s gender happened earlier. She had spent the entire decade in the public eye, first as a controversial Minister for Education, then as leader of the opposition. When she became a cabinet minister in 1970, Thatcher told journalists, "There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime - the male population is too prejudiced." The prejudice showed itself in the way it still does with women politicians: complaints about a “shrill” voice, insinuations about her home life, and perceptions of her as power grasping.
While this is moving into political science, research by Okimoto and Briscoll shows that even into this decade, women politicians seen as ambitious are penalized for “power-seeking intentions (actual or perceived)”where men are not. Thatcher’s denial of interest in higher office blunts those charges of ambition. Further, Schneider and Bos found that “female politicians do not share the qualities that are ascribed to women (e.g., warm, empathetic). Our results show that female politicians seem to be ‘losing’ on male stereotypical qualities while also not having any advantage on qualities typical of women.”
Thatcher in many ways guarded her "feminine" qualities for when needed, but emphasized to a remarkable degree her "masculine ones." Time wrote of her as opposition leader: “Thatcher is not like any candidate I’ve ever seen. She is Barry Goldwater played by Pat Nixon—a tough, uncompromising politician in a meticulously ladylike package.” Thatcher embraced the Soviet attack on her as an “Iron Lady” to build up her image as strong and tough, traits typically ascribed to men.
Regarding voice, this was the kind of thing written by a serious journalist about Thatcher in 1975:
The hang-up has always been the voice. Not the timbre so much as, well, the tone – the condescending explanatory whine which treats the squirming interlocutor as an eight-year-old child with personality deficiencies. It has been fascinating, recently, to watch her striving to eliminate this. BBC2 News Extra on Tuesday night rolled a clip from May 1973 demonstrating the Thatcher sneer at full pitch. (She was saying that she wouldn't dream of seeking the leadership.) She sounded like a cat sliding down a blackboard."
Consider that upon Thatcher’s death, Margaret Drabble wrote: “As her power increased, her voice deepened, her accent transmuted into a parody of received pronunciation and she acquired a false persona.” Voice is a critical part of Thatcher the politician, and the deep voice was most definitely an adopted tool designed to blunt negative reactions to her as a woman and create a persona that could be elected Prime Minister.
Her style was ruthlessly critiqued and criticized. Wrote Time in 1975:
Her impeccably permed hair, unabashedly tweedy wardrobe, ever-present strand of pearls and garden-party hats draw parodists’ attention more irresistibly than do similar badges of class in male M.P.s. Says one Conservative backbencher: “She’s not only a woman. She’s the wrong sort of woman. She might be acceptable in the suburbs and seaside resort areas. I cannot see her making much of an impact in the industrial northeast and Scotland. After all, she’s a very suburban lady.”
Thatcher was adamantly not a feminist and exhibited no warmth to notions of sisterhood or needed systemic change. Beatrix Campbell described as: "Femininity is what she wears, masculinity is what she admires." Hugo Young wrote:
"What is certainly not disputable is the reluctance of this controlled and controlling woman to treat women, politically, as any different from men. She was against this on principle, apparently seeing nothing in her own rise to power which might prompt her to single women out for special attention … women as a separate category of voters were not of special interest."
Thatcher could use her femininity as a tool when it was needed, as this Guardian piece says, but it was an innately traditional femininity.
She irritatingly played the feminine card whenever it suited her purposes. The Iron Lady could melt winningly and even shed a tear when needed. She compared the economy to running a household budget and was ever ready for a cosy chat in the No 10 kitchen with any undemanding magazine interviewer who would be content with a girlie giggle over the decor or a discussion about what she made Denis for his dinner.
Her style of leadership was fundamentally different from many women politicians who would follow. Francis Fukayama noted this difference in an essay, saying:
If tomorrow's troublemakers are armed with nuclear weapons, we might be better off being led by women like Margaret Thatcher than, say, Gro Harlem Brundtland. Masculine policies will still be essential even in a feminized world.
In sum, Margaret Thatcher constructed a persona that was neither feminine or masculine but both in the places where it helped her win. Always acting as the toughest in the room, but able to speak of running government like running a household and shedding a well-timed tear. She was able to subvert expectations about women politicians in a way that garnered remarkable success in part by rejecting that there was a class of individuals called "women politicians." Thatcher was criticized for pulling up the ladder behind her, and for women politicians around her and following her, that is likely true.
Sources:
Caryl, Christian (2014), Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century, Basic Books
Drabble https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/13/margaret-thatcher-influence-women
Fukuyama https://www.jstor.org/stable/20049048 BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22076886
Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-women
James, Clive (9 February 1975). "Getting Mrs T into focus". The Observer
Okimoto https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167210371949
Schneider https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/pops.12040