Basic Information
Name: Margaret Thatcher
Nickname: The Iron Lady, Milk Snatcher, England's Best Man
Born: October 13, 1925
Died: April 8, 2013
Nationality: British
Hometown: London, England
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
Education: Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree from Oxford
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Alfred and Beatrice Roberts
Siblings: Older Sister Muriel Roberts
Spouse: Denis Thatcher (1951-2003)
Children: Twins Carol and Mark
Friends: Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, The Queen… no one of consequence, really
Foes: Liberals, political opponents, Soviet Russia
Name: Ronald Reagan
Nickname: The Gipper, the Jelly Bean Man, Dutch, The Great Communicator, The Teflon President
Born: February 6, 1911
Died: June 5, 2004
Nationality: American
Hometown: Hollywood, California
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Actor, Politician, President of the United States
Education: B.A. in Economics from Eureka College
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Nelle and John "Jack" Reagan
Siblings: Older brother Neil Reagan
Spouse: Jane Wyman (1940 through 1948), Nancy Davis (1952 onwards),
Children: Maureen, Christine (only lived one day ), and Michael (with Jane Wyman), Patti and Ron (with Nancy Davis),
Friends: The Bush Family, Margaret Thatcher, Political Conservatives,
Foes: Affirmative action, communists, illegal drugs
Analysis
In the early parts of her speech, Le Guin references several people to elaborate upon whether or not you can tell the difference between their genders by the things that they say. Up first: Margaret Thatcher is compared to Ronald Reagan.
Margaret Thatcher, much like her American counterpart Ronald Reagan, was a conservative politician who helped move both economic and foreign policies to the right. In fact, they were allied in many of their efforts. One biographer wrote that their relationship was "closer ideologically and warmer personally than any relationship between any other British prime minister and any other American president." (Smith, 1991) Both believed wholeheartedly in the strength of free markets, the evils of communism, and their careers united to lead a golden age of conservatism.
Their warm camaraderie and politically shared interests was Le Guin's whole point. If you were to read anything the two politicians said, could you tell which one of them was a man or a woman, based on the words alone?
Let's try an experiment. Try to identify which one said which quote:
"Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction." (Source)
"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect." (Source)
Got a clue? (Answer: the discipline quote belongs to the Iron Lady, and the constraints quote is attributed to Reagan).
Their sex just isn't announced through their speeches….so unless they're directly addressing the subject of gender, there's no way an objective listener could tell the difference between the male politician or the female one.
This is Le Guin's whole point. She says:
Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. (7-10)
In other words: women have learned to sound like men when doing any form of public speaking out of the necessity to conform to a man's world; so much so that they're indistinguishable when merely comparing speech. As our little experiment proves, public speaking had become pretty stylistically homogenous, and Le Guin was pointing out that it wasn't necessarily a good thing.
That's why her speech was so special: she was going to speak "in the language of women."