Women have spent the past 100 years fighting to get their voices heard and become equals to men, gaining the vote and working hard to get far in their careers. The women who manage to work their way to the top of business or their profession then have to deal with who to employ on their team, if they employ women they are considered biased and if they don’t they are turned on by fellow women for not sticking to the sisterhood. But should these female bosses be targeted for not supporting fellow women or are some women just expecting an easier time in their career/job interviews with a female boss and are disappointed when they don’t get it?

One person criticised for who she hired was Margaret Thatcher who barely employed any women in her cabinet over her 11 years in power. The reason  because for her these women clearly weren’t cut out for the job she wanted them to do. She wanted the best person for that role, it just turned out that most of them were men.

I know many women disagree with what she did, they say having a woman Prime Minister should have been the best time for more women to be in politics and improve their careers but isn’t that a little bit unfair? I’m 100% certain that if she was a man then she would never have had so much flack thrown at her about this subject.

I’m not sticking up for Thatcher’s policies or hatred of feminism here because I completely disagree with her but she never claimed to be a feminist going as far as to say it was a waste of time but was she right not to employ many women?

I will point out right here that I would class myself as a feminist and feminism is not something for old, slightly crazy women who absolutely detest men but it is something every woman should be a part of.  My view of feminism matches the view that Caitlin Moran describes in her book, ‘How To Be A Woman’, she says that feminism in the basic sense means wanting to be as free as men. That means equal rights. Equal rights: equal pay, high power jobs and respect from colleagues and peers for our career/life choices.

If we want to be seen as being equal to men in pay and jobs then we need to work for it, we can’t expect it to be handed to us on a plate for being a woman. How would men ever respect us if we got our jobs based on our gender and not our qualifications and hard work?

Pressuring women bosses into employing you because you are a woman is completely unfair and being employed just because you are a woman and not because of your skills to me seems slightly degrading that it only comes down to your chromosomes and not your intelligence.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t stick together as women because we need to, the sisterhood is important but I do think Thatcher’s stance was right on this one. It would be great to see more women in high power jobs, I’d love to see more women politicians and female heads of businesses/corporations but just like men we have to earn our jobs and work up to the top. Granted it is a lot harder for us and more than likely we won’t achieve full equality even in our generation but we can try by refusing to give up, being ambitious and working hard.