Cathy Young on How Margaret Thatcher Advanced Women's Liberation

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Credit: Williams / U.S. Military / wikimedia

As Margaret Thatcher is laid to rest and the world continues to take stock of her life, the inevitable questions arise that would have no counterpart for a male leader: What did Thatcher and her legacy mean for women and for feminism? There was little love lost between the Iron Lady and the "Women's Libbers," as she called them. But if liberation means pursuing one's own path regardless of others' notions of what women should be, writes Cathy Young, then Britain's former Prime Minister was one of the great liberated women of the 20th century—one who defied both traditional and feminist prescriptions.