In the sobriquet Iron Lady, isn’t lady too deferential for a mocking nickname? Its author, Yuri Gavrilov, hardly knew that in current English, lady is a genteelism when used by those who fear that if they say woman it will be taken as an accusation that someone is no lady. This has had the perverse effect that those who normally call women women still call the cleaning woman the cleaning lady.
It was in the Red Star newspaper dated 24 January 1976 that Margaret Thatcher, when leader of the opposition, was called zheleznaya dama, ‘iron lady’. The iron part had parallels in the Iron Chancellor Bismarck or the Iron Duke of Wellington. (In Wellington’s case, the phrase was at first used ironically, mostly after his death in 1852, although Punch had called him the ‘Wrought-Iron Duke’ as early as 1842.)
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