Glass-ceiling rhetoric of privileged condescends ordinary women

Like Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher, both Merkel and May married into success, Margaret Hickey 

WHEN Hillary Clinton failed to win the Democratic nomination in the last US presidential election, she said: “this time, we did not succeed in breaking the highest, hardest glass ceiling, but ... we have put about 18m cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before”. It looks more likely she will succeed this time (she is the presumptive nominee), but would her victory open new horizons for other women, just because she, with her extraordinary advantages, has succeeded?

In the UK, Theresa May has followed Margaret Thatcher and has become the second female Conservative prime minister. There is no evidence that Thatcher would have seen her personal achievement as a watershed for women, or that May would. Likewise, Angela Merkel, who heads Germany, the most powerful country in the EU, would be unlikely to talk about shattering glass ceilings for others to follow.