Still in a Man's World: Whatever happened to Theresa May?

Is it ever possible to think of a female Prime Minister as just, well, a Prime Minister? We've only had two so far, so at this point it's still hard to say. Male and female Prime Ministers do the same job, after all, but it's somehow difficult not to approach them differently. In public life, women are scrutinised by the media in ways that men simply aren't. Ordinarily, Prime Ministers make the news for their policies, their moves and countermoves, rather than, say, their outfits. The plethora of articles discussing Thatcher's and May's sartorial decisions, from the former's collection of power suits to the latter’s love of kitten heels and those leather trousers, suggest that the way we see a female Prime Minister will always be different from how we see a male one.

It goes deeper than aesthetics, of course. May resigned from Office six months ago, ending her term as Prime Minister with tears in her eyes and words of duty and regret on her lips, and the limelight has, as would be expected, shifted away from her. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, May told journalists that she has been taking advantage of this, focusing on spending time with family and ‘learning to cook one new recipe every week’. When this was reported by the Daily Mail, the comments section was filled with dozens of remarks criticising her ministerial tenure (many involving cooking puns, ranging from the classic ‘Get back in the kitchen’ to ‘The only thing she should do in her kitchen is close the window and turn on the gas…’) and noting that she had only a husband, and no children, to cook for. After Andrea Leadsom commented that she was a better candidate for PM since, unlike May, she was a mother, the resulting media row caused Leadsom to drop out of the 2016 race for Downing Street. It seems like little has changed about the divisiveness of weaponising gender in politics, specifically in terms of femininity.

May’s speech at the Oxford Union on November 15th 2019 was her first official oration since that resignation address in front of No. 10, and carried with it a strange significance. While she has remained an active backbencher since the end of July, May has largely been a forgettable figure, especially relative to Boris Johnson and his press-fodder political campaigns. This is entirely relevant to the comments she made about femininity and politics in the Union chamber - ‘If a woman in politics shows emotion, it is seen as a weakness. If a woman in politics doesn't show emotion, she's accused of a hard heart, of lacking sympathy and empathy and of being robotic. These are not the same tests that are applied to men.’

When May asserts that she consciously repressed the manifestation of her emotions (and, on a more subconscious level, those emotions themselves) throughout her political career, and particularly during her tenure as Prime Minister, she is making a wider statement about women in politics. The tears of her resignation speech come as a reminder of the personal sacrifices politicians - and specifically, one might argue, women politicians - make for the sake of their careers. May spoke of duty outside Downing Street, and she spoke of it again in Oxford; that underlying principal which ties Crown rule to Parliamentary authority has been as evident as ever in May’s movements over recent months.

Around two weeks after her visit to the Oxford Union, May unveiled a statue of Nancy Astor, the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat, in Plymouth. The choice of May for the unveiling, as this country’s second female Prime Minister, and perhaps more importantly one of the most powerful women in Britain, seems apt. But the politically problematic elements of Astor, and thus of the statue, are revisited on May herself. The Jewish Chronicle details how Astor ‘worked to bar the hiring of Jews and Catholics’ at The Observer, which Waldorf Astor (the 2nd Viscount Astor, and Nancy Astor’s second husband) owned; in the wake of the statue’s unveiling, tens of thousand of people complained on platforms such as Twitter of Astor’s various anti-Semitic actions and sentiments, which included sitting Joachim von Ribbentrop, the soon-to-be Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany (he held the position from 1938 to 1945), next to her at a dinner she hosted in 1936. The general sentiment of Astor’s anti-Semitism and a keenness to engage with figures already associated with the burgeoning Nazi Party of course colours the public’s view of May’s involvement with the statue reveal ceremony.

It is impossible to view Astor only as a woman politician, and this as the link which May wants to celebrate - in attempting to do so, May disregards the wide public concern about the celebration for figures such as Astor, who, while revolutionary in certain positive ways, are also deeply problematic. During an election campaign in which the Conservatives were attempting to take full advantage of allegations of anti-Semitism from Jeremy Corbyn and the wider Labour party, it seemed crudely hypocritical for a Tory backbencher following the campaign trail to flirt with anti-Semitic associations. The feminine link between Astor and May will always be key - but May cannot argue that that femininity overshadows the divisive and offensive elements of Astor’s conduct and character.

During her final days as Prime Minister in the summer, May made it a priority to see new anti-domestic violence legislation passed and made into a statute. She was keen to extend the definition of domestic abuse from that in the then-current legislation, since the definition did not cover emotional and financial abuse. The drafted legislation also made prosecutable more offences than previously. Domestic violence and domestic abuse are issues from which women suffer more than men, certainly statistically and almost fundamentally; allegedly, fears that this legislation would be sidelined by whoever her successor might be were the reason for May’s keenness to make the drafts statutory before she left office. In terms of odds, May was probably aware that the next Prime Minister to be elected would probably be a man. A very real fear that women’s physical and psychological concerns would be valued less highly by a male than a female Prime Minister are not unreasonable - so saying, the end of May’s term in office was as defined by femininity as the beginning of it.

Interestingly, the Conservative Manifesto for the 2019 General Election contained firm support for the Domestic Abuse Bill, as it still needs to be passed in the Commons and Laws after becoming a statute before it is taken as law. Johnson has pledged his support for the introduction of a Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and for county and local councils to be obliged to provide safe houses for the victims of domestic abuse where required. The vow in the Manifesto to ‘pilot integrated domestic abuse courts that address criminal and family matters in parallel’ was a step ahead for domestic abuse court cases, and takes May’s original Bill even further. May is yet to comment on Johnson’s response to the legislation she initially attempted to bring through, though the fact that he has brought it forward (especially after fears that his prorogation of Parliament would prevent the Bill from being passed at all) surely indicates support for the issues at hand and for May’s handling of them.

May is perhaps more popular now than she was as Prime Minister. When she walked down Plymouth Hoe to unveil the Astor statue, she was met by crowds of cheering bystanders, with the cyberstorm of heated comments about Astor only arising hours later. She will retain her status as a backbencher and may go on to bring in further legislation which benefits women. As a female politician, May has defended the rights of women in various aspects, and spoken about the complicated role of the lady in politics, as was evident at the Union a few weeks ago. It has been said that May ought not to be viewed solely as a female Prime Minister, but this might be oversimplifying things. Perhaps we aren't yet ready to say that a woman can be a successful Prime Minister because of her sex, and not in spite of it.

Annabelle Fuller is a second-year undergraduate reading Classics and English at Magdalen College