"Grazie, Signora Thatcher!"

This paper deals with Margaret Thatcher. My analysis of Mrs Thatcher as a politician and as a woman starts from a study on how the first woman Prime Minister was treated by the Italian press. Was the press sexist? Did the press treat Margaret Thatcher as it usually treats male politicians? I also interviewed journalists who were in London as correspondents of some of the major Italian quality papers during the Thatcher years, and who met Mrs Thatcher on various occasions. I tried to analyse Mrs Thatcher as a woman and as a politician but above all I tried to demonstrate that a woman can reach positions usually reserved to men, as Thatcher herself showed. Of course, she had to face twice the difficulties a man has to face, but she succeeded in keeping in power for a very long time. As it has been pointed out, she probably had to “act” as a man. In fact she had always been very direct in her speeches and actions, mainly using a sort of “male language” and “male behaviour”, without losing her femininity. She got exactly what she wanted.