Introduction
People matter. Their stories matter.
I decided to write this book because there are incredible women who inspired me throughout my life, and I want other people to be inspired, too. This book is about ten bold and courageous women with ten important lessons to teach us. Of course, they are not the only ten. I chose them because their stories spoke to me, and I found their lessons to be particularly relevant.
Many of these women faced daunting struggles and responsibilities. I talk about my own experiences not to compare but to explain how great leaders can make a difference in our daily lives. From the big decisions to the everyday choices we make, I hope these stories give you the courage to live the life you want and deserve.
Some of the women are living; some come from different historical eras. Some are well known and some less so. Some come from the political realm, and others come from the worlds of athletics and innovation. Some chose their paths in life, and some found themselves, by no choice of their own, facing terrifying choices. They all share something in common that spans time and geography—they embody the qualities that make great leaders. Tenacity. Perseverance. Service. Decisiveness. Courage. Strength. They made and continue to make an impact on the world. They inspire us, make us want to work harder, be better, do more. Their legacies are not confined to their small or large corner of the universe. Their stories can touch all of us.
Some choices were obvious. In the political realm, Margaret Thatcher has always been a personal hero who inspired me as I ventured into government. Jeane Kirkpatrick was the first female U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position I later held. When I came to learn about Golda Meir, one of Israel’s founding leaders and its first female prime minister, her story resonated with me, having served as South Carolina’s first female executive.
In the human rights realm, I had the privilege of working with Nadia Murad and Cindy Warmbier at the United Nations. They both endured horrible tragedies and showed incredible strength. In the struggle for civil rights, Claudette Colvin and Virginia Walden Ford represent the progress we have made as a country and the ongoing battle to continue that progress.
Finally, Wilma Rudolph, Virginia Hall, and Amelia Earhart were leaders who reached the top of their respective fields. They lived at times when there were low expectations of women professionally, yet they became world class in athletics, espionage, and aviation. They showed the world what is possible when you refuse to give up on your dreams, when you refuse to let adversity define you.
Many of the women in this book were firsts. The first to be prime minister. The first to take a stand. The first to fly. Being the first is hard. It can be lonely and isolating. There is no road map, and people assume something is impossible simply because it hasn’t been done before. These women are leaders because they paved the way for the women who came after them. We walk in their footsteps and leave a well-trodden path for the women who come after us.
As you read these pages, remember we have the potential to make life better for others. In our own small way, we can inspire, mentor, and encourage other women to do great things. So, don’t hold back. Don’t be silent. Don’t give in to fear.
Be bold. Be adventurous. Be yourself. There will always be people who want to tell you what you can do and what you can’t. What is possible and what is not. I know because I have encountered those people throughout my life. Some of them were well meaning. But all of them wanted to limit my potential. Your potential is limitless. Your life—the life you want—is worth fighting for.
So, fight.
1
It’s easy to talk about principles. It’s hard to stand by them when everyone is lined up against you. No one embodied this truth better than Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister. She wanted to save Great Britain, and she knew it would be difficult. That didn’t stop her. That was a reason to forge ahead. That’s why she’s always been an inspiration to me. And that’s why I borrowed a version of her famous quote for the title of this book.
“If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.” Margaret Thatcher didn’t want to become prime minister to sit around and talk. She wanted to do things. Big things. Important things. This determination in the face of opposition defines many of the women in this book. It was how my mother raised us—to confront problems head-on and find solutions. And it struck a chord with me as I sought to leave my mark on South Carolina.
I ran for office to make a difference. I’ve always believed the best way to appreciate God’s blessings is to give back. But to really work to lift up everyone and make lives better, you have to be willing to shake things up.
The best—or worst—example of this was my fight against the practice of holding voice votes and not showing individual votes on the record in the South Carolina state legislature. If you wanted to see how your legislator voted on an important bill—like voting for a pay increase for themselves—you couldn’t look it up. There was no record. There was no transparency and no way to hold legislators accountable. It was embarrassing, and it had to stop.
I wrote a bill that would require a roll call vote on any legislation that spent or raised taxpayer money. Only one other legislator wanted to sponsor the bill. At a Republican meeting, the Speaker of the House attacked me for daring to challenge how the legislature had long operated. He actually said they would decide what voters needed to see and what they didn’t.
I was appalled and frustrated. I knew the people of South Carolina would agree with me if they knew what was happening, so I took the fight to them. I traveled around the state urging voters to call their legislators and tell them to support my bill that simply stated anything important enough to be debated on the floor of the House or Senate should require a legislative vote on the record. This made my Republican leaders furious—so furious that the Speaker stripped me of all my positions. He wanted to make an example of me, as if to say, “This is what happens when you challenge the establishment.”
If that was supposed to dissuade me, it failed. His retaliation only made me want to succeed more. I went to the press and told my side of the story. This fight coincided with the rise of the Tea Party movement, and thousands of people all across South Carolina joined the fight for accountability.
When the legislature blackballed me for my fight, I did the only thing left I knew to do. I ran for governor. After I became governor, it was one of the first bills I signed into law. The day of the signing ceremony, we blasted Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” from the sound system in the statehouse. The establishment certainly tried to hit me with its best shot. It failed. Now in South Carolina, every legislator has to show their vote on the record, and we took it a step further—including their spending on every section of the budget.
That fight hurt, but I learned a lot from it. When you try to make a difference, there are always going to be people who want to stop you. My fellow legislators certainly enjoyed the system of zero transparency, and they fought back with everything they had to humiliate me. They threatened me, they punished me, and they tried to shame me. You have to be willing to put it all on the line. And you have to be willing to go through the pain to do what is right.
Margaret Thatcher was better at this than anyone. She took on fights no one thought she could win—and she won many of them. She wasn’t an obvious choice for leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. She was a grocer’s daughter and a woman. There were few people who looked like her or shared her middle-class background in British politics. Her Tory Party was dominated by upper-class men who were used to getting their way. She went into the thick of battle knowing she would be dismissed and attacked, and she used that to her advantage. She saved Britain from socialist collapse, inspired countless conservatives, and made history. Not bad for “the Grocer’s Daughter”—one of the many nicknames given to her by her opponents. Not bad at all.
Margaret Thatcher
Stand for Principle
If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.
—MARGARET THATCHER
I wear heels. It’s not for a fashion statement. It’s because if I see something wrong, we’re going to kick ’em every single time.1
—NIKKI HALEY
On January 19, 1976, Margaret Thatcher gave a speech that would define her leadership and her legacy. The speech focused on her recent trip to West Germany, where she visited British armed forces. She called for investing in the British military as the world grappled with Soviet Communism. The Marxists, she argued, were “bent on world dominance,” and Britain was ill prepared to meet the challenge of the moment. This particular challenge demanded a reckoning: “This was a moment when our choice will determine the life or death of our kind of society: Let’s ensure that our children will have cause to rejoice that we did not forsake their freedom.”2
It was a good speech but not a revolutionary one. Thatcher hit on many of the same themes she had been trumpeting since she became the Tory Party’s opposition leader in 1975. But she got lucky. The Soviet Union’s military newspaper, the Red Star, criticized her speech by comparing her to Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, the nineteenth-century “Iron Chancellor.” The insult of choice? The Soviets called her the “Iron Lady.”3
Thatcher embraced the insult as a badge of honor. Shortly after the article was published, she introduced herself to the Conservative Association of Finchley, saying, “I stand before you tonight in my Red Star chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up and my fair hair gently waved, the Iron Lady of the Western world. A Cold War warrior.… Yes, I am an iron lady … if that’s how they wish to interpret my defense of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life.”4
Where did her iron will come from? It came from a passionate love of country and the belief that Britain was repeatedly let down and humiliated by its leaders. It came from watching Britain go from being a world superpower to being “the sick man of Europe.”5 It came from a fierce sense of principle and the confidence that she was right. And it came with time, practice, and experience—decades of being dismissed strengthened her backbone. She developed an immunity to the outrage of the chattering class.
Margaret Thatcher shaped Britain, and Britain shaped her. As she climbed the ranks of government in the second half of the twentieth century, she watched socialism destroy England’s economy and standing in the world. And she watched England withdraw from international affairs as the United States and Soviet Union dominated the world stage.
Ted Heath, her predecessor as Conservative leader, won election in 1970 on a free-market agenda, but he quickly caved when the economy took a turn for the worse. Under Heath, the government printed money to fuel its spending increases, bailed out failing industries, and introduced wage and price controls.6 When Heath called an election in 1974 under the slogan “Who Governs Britain?” the British people responded by handing the socialist Labour Party a resounding victory.7
For Thatcher, Conservative defeat in 1974 was a turning point. She viewed Ted Heath’s political rout as a public rebuke of the party’s lukewarm philosophy. Conservatives wasted their majority on consensus—a word Margaret hated with every bone in her body.8 “The Old Testament prophets didn’t go out into the highways saying, ‘Brothers, I want consensus,’” she remarked. “They said, ‘this is my faith and my vision. This is what I passionately believe.’ And they preached it.”9
By the time Thatcher became opposition leader in 1975, Britain was in a sorry state. Inflation would soar to a record-breaking 25 percent that year.10 The government owned or controlled more than half of the country’s economic output.11 The once-mighty Britain was trapped in a cycle of government spending and taxation.
Her years as opposition leader gave Thatcher an opportunity to take her faith and vision for a test drive. It began by staking out unchartered ground on the most important issue facing Britain and the world: Soviet Communism. Thatcher’s rejection of socialism and communism wasn’t just economic. It was a moral crusade against an existential threat. Communism denied people their God-given rights to freedom. Therefore, it had to be eradicated. This was not a popular opinion in the Tory Party or even in much of the Western world. Under U.S. president Richard Nixon, the 1970s was defined by a policy of détente—an easing of hostilities between America and the Soviet Union and a commitment to working with each other.12
Her view of socialism at home wasn’t that different. She believed it was a moral crime for government to strip people of their right to make economic choices, to own property, and to build better lives for themselves and their families. She lambasted socialism’s insistence on equality of results in a speech called “Let Our Children Grow Tall.” The punch line was: “Let our children grow tall and some taller than others if they have the ability to do so.”13 When she spoke of England’s economic hardship, she didn’t talk about statistics and numbers. She spoke in big, bold declarations. “Inflation,” she declared during her inaugural trip to America, “is a pernicious evil capable of destroying any society built on a value system where freedom is paramount.”14
Back home, the liberal newspaper The Guardian wrote a scathing but not inaccurate review of her trip to the States. “Mrs. Thatcher’s speeches … show that she has broken decisively with the Disraelian Tory tradition of pragmatism.” The Guardian was right. Pragmatism … consensus … Thatcher believed these timid words held Britain back from realizing its potential. “It is often said that politics is the art of the possible,” she said. “The danger of such a phrase is that we may deem impossible things which would be possible, indeed desirable, if only we had more courage, more insight.”15
It was this insistence on a courageous, ideological vision that shepherded Margaret Thatcher into power. It helped that the ruling Labour Party had thrown the British economy into a tailspin.
The winter of 1978/79 was England’s coldest winter in sixteen years.16 The weather matched the mood of the country. Britain was beaten down by record-breaking inflation and a crippling industrial crisis. Worker strikes plagued nearly every sector of the economy. From bread strikes to hospital strikes to trucking strikes to sanitation strikes, millions of people stopped doing their jobs. Trains didn’t run, packages weren’t delivered, garbage piled up in the street, and unburied bodies filled graveyards. This period became known as the “Winter of Discontent.”17 In classic British fashion, it was a massive understatement.
On January 10, 1979, Labour Party prime minister James Callaghan gave a press conference upon returning from an official trip overseas. When asked to respond to criticism that he shouldn’t have traveled during this time of economic turmoil, his dismissive answer resulted in a devastating headline.18
The next morning, The Sun declared, CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS? These words sounded Labour’s death knell.19 On March 28, 1979, the incumbent government lost a no-confidence vote by a single vote, forcing an election.20
On May 4, 1979, Margaret Thatcher made history. Conservatives claimed a forty-three-seat majority, and Thatcher was elected prime minister.21 It was a crowning achievement at a time when few women occupied the heights of political power. But it was also a sobering moment. Britain’s past and future were colliding, and it was up to her to chart the course.
It was not a course for the faint of heart. Thatcher broke ranks with decades of Keynesian economics, which demanded more government spending. Thatcher subscribed to monetarism—a theory embraced by Milton Friedman and other free-market thinkers who believed the amount of money in supply was directly responsible for inflation. Too much money in circulation depressed the value of the British pound. If Thatcher wanted to curb inflation, she’d have to get the money supply under control. She started by cutting government spending, increasing interest rates, cutting income taxes, and increasing the value-added tax (Europe’s version of a sales tax).22
As 1979 turned into 1980, Thatcher’s austerity measures exacted more pain from the British people. Inflation wouldn’t begin to drop until 1981. In the meantime, unemployment rose quickly, and gross domestic product dropped just as fast. By the time Margaret Thatcher delivered her second conference speech as prime minister in October 1980, she had a recession on her hands.23
The pressure mounted for Thatcher to reverse course, or pull what the media dubbed a “U-turn.” After all, that’s exactly what Ted Heath had done. Now the Heath wing of the Tory Party—known as the “Wets”—and the liberal Labour Party were calling for a reversal, along with a throng of economists, the media, and members of her own cabinet.24
The environment had all the makings of a pressure cooker. So many people were rooting for Thatcher to fail. Could the Iron Lady withstand the tension?
October 10, 1980, was a stormy day, and the icy rain was unforgiving. That didn’t stop 4,000 protestors from gathering outside the conference center and yelling, “Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out!” It took 2,500 police officers to contain the crowd.25
Inside, Thatcher prepared to give her speech to the rank-and-file members of the Conservative Party. But it wasn’t just the party faithful she was speaking to. The eyes of the country—and the world—were upon her.
On that rainy October day, Margaret Thatcher had a choice. It was not an obvious choice. Millions of people were hurting. Many in her own party didn’t have her back. Many suspected she wasn’t cut out for leadership simply because she was a woman. They viewed the economic chaos as confirmation of their suspicions.
But they underestimated her. They didn’t know her—and those who did didn’t understand her. Few recalled or even knew that her crusade to save Britain was decades in the making. Thirty years prior, when she was only twenty-four years old, she made her first political run for Parliament in the working-class area of Dartford. She made her pitch to voters in a newspaper article, offering them a choice between Britain as it was and Britain as it was meant to be.26
Are YOU going to let this proud island race, who at one time would never accept charity, drift on from crisis to crisis under a further spell of shaky Socialist finance? Or do you believe in sound finance and economical spending of public money, such as the Conservatives will adopt? YOU will decide.… Do you want it to perish for a soul-less Socialist system, or to live to recreate a glorious Britain? YOU WILL DECIDE.27
The choice in 1980 was the same as it had been thirty years before. The only difference was she was in charge. The protestors were chanting her name. The TV cameras were zoomed in on her face. The world was listening to her words.
She began her speech by acknowledging the challenge at hand. It was no small thing to reverse four decades of economic sickness and national decline. She acknowledged the pain caused by unemployment. She didn’t try to spin the numbers and make them look better than they were.28
But she also highlighted everything Conservatives had accomplished in seventeen months. They were opening up the British economy to competition, they had begun the difficult task of cracking the whip on trade unions, they eliminated exchange controls that prohibited foreign investment, they introduced important reforms to reduce government monopolies, and they began the process of selling off council homes—Britain’s version of public housing.29
Then she turned to her critics and declared, “To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the ‘U’ turn, I have only one thing to say. ‘You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.’”30
The soon-to-be famous line was a spoof on a play by Christopher Fry called The Lady’s Not for Burning.31 Few people remember the source. But many remember Thatcher’s defiant declaration, a reminder that she was not the typical politician who turned back the minute the going got tough. It was a reminder that she was indeed the Iron Lady.
That 1980 speech was a big test, but the pressure to perform a U-turn continued throughout Thatcher’s premiership. In 1982, as unemployment hovered at 13 percent, she responded to the pressure with a new slogan—“The Resolute Approach.” The three words hung on a banner when she gave her third conference speech: “We will not disguise our purpose nor betray our principles. We will do what must be done. We will tell the people the truth and the people will be our judge.”32
Thatcher’s refusal to do a U-turn was important for two reasons. First, her economic policies kick-started the change Britain needed. Over ten years in office, Thatcher reversed forty years of socialism. She privatized major industries and utilities, including British Telecom, British Gas, British Steel, British Petroleum, British Airways, Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, and the water and electricity utilities.33 She took on the powerful trade unions, passing legislation that removed their legal immunity and making them financially liable for damages.34 She brought inflation down, cut the top income tax rate from 98 percent to 40 percent, deregulated the financial sector, and helped turn London into a financial powerhouse.35 She also became increasingly opposed to efforts to erode Britain’s economic independence in favor of a European collective.36
The second reason goes back to Margaret Thatcher’s initial diagnosis when she was an aspiring member of Parliament, all of twenty-four years old. Thatcher believed—correctly—that the British people were tired of weak-kneed leaders. They were tired of being laughed at and discounted. They were desperate for a leader who believed in Britain enough to fight for it. That fighter was Margaret Thatcher. Her confidence and faith were contagious. Her strength was Britain’s strength.
Thatcher’s appeal wasn’t just ideological. It was emotional. She taught Britain to believe in itself again. She reminded people that they didn’t have to settle, that it’s okay to dream and to stand by that dream when people tell you it can’t be done.
What was the secret to her success? She believed in Britain, but more importantly, she believed in herself. As a female politician, she was used to being dismissed, criticized, and picked apart. She was too female, too principled, too demanding. Her voice was “too shrill,” her clothing “too fussy.”37 She earned a slew of nasty nicknames, from “Thatcher, the Milksnatcher”38 to “Attila the Hen”39 to “T.B.W.—That Bloody Woman.”40
There is a long list of people who thought she wouldn’t go far. Upon meeting her in 1975, Henry Kissinger remarked, “I don’t think Margaret Thatcher will last.”41 Even Milton Friedman, whom Thatcher admired, wrote, “She is a very attractive and interesting lady. Whether she really has the capacities that Britain so badly needs at this time, I must confess, seems to me a very open question.”42
At home, she had many detractors. Some were downright sexist. It was not unusual for her fellow members of Parliament to catcall when she spoke.43 When she ran for opposition leader, The Economist described her as “precisely the sort of candidate who ought to be able to stand, and lose, harmlessly.” Others were more dismissive: “We don’t need to take this Thatcher business seriously, do we?”44 Even when she won, the press asked her what issue propelled her to victory. She responded, “I like to think it was merit.” “Could you expand on that?” they pressed. She didn’t take the bait. “No, it doesn’t need expansion.”45
Margaret Thatcher died in 2013, but she is still loved and hated, admired and denounced. Her famous quips are still repeated and quoted. Her story lives on. She is larger than life because she embodied what so many of us want to be: confident, courageous, principled. Those are simple things, but sometimes the simplest things are the hardest.
In a public eye where everything you say and believe is scrutinized under a microscope, believing in yourself and standing by your principles are more important than ever. The internet and social media make every John Doe an expert and a critic. The bigger and bolder the idea, the harsher and louder the criticism. It can be tempting to sit on the sidelines and let the world pass you by.
With that attitude, there never would have been a Margaret Thatcher or an Iron Lady. Britain might still be “the sick man of Europe.” Standing for principle takes courage—courage to put yourself out there in the first place, courage to stand tall when others try to knock you down, courage to see your vision through, no matter how long it takes. Refusing to try, failing to dream, would be the biggest tragedy of all.
Copyright © 2022 by Nikki R. Haley