Date: 04 October 2010 10:38:00
TOH and I went to see Made in Dagenham over the weekend and I don't think I am exaggerating if I say it had a huge effect upon us which we weren't expecting. We both ended up sobbing in the cinema because we were so moved.
It tells the story of a group of working class women who worked as machinists at the Ford Motors factory in Dagenham in 1968 and went on strike when their jobs were reclassified as unskilled. As this Sunday Times piece explains, this strike was in many ways the starting point of the road which led to the equal pay act, and a debate which still persists.
The film is important because it explodes an awful lot of myths which the writers of history would have us believe. It also highlights to the generations who were born after all this they owe to those women who were their mothers and grandmothers....a debt not often spoken of. On a personal level I think it helped me understand my mother a little more; catching a glimpse of the world of her youth. A world which I cannot really get my head around, being one of the beneficiaries of the changes in education and working practices which emerged as a result of these and similar actions.
The scene which hit us both most was the middle class woman at the working class strikers door. She was saying how she had a first from Cambridge but that actually meant little in the male dominated world. She was telling the leader of the strikers why it was so important they carry on and win.
Now I teach Feminist theory, I teach radical and liberal Feminism and Womanism (black feminism). Womanism largely seeks to disassociate itself from the "middle class" Feminist theory that the "second wave" of feminism gave us and I now totally understand why. People such have myself have been teaching one, rather distorted view of the truth which has been handed down to us in lectures and text books. This film explodes the lie we have been perpetuating in our lectures!!!!
The truth is that whilst the Women's Lib movement and the middle class intellectuals may have had a role in the changes which occurred in the 60's and 70's and equally so did middle class commentators and politicians of a less radical persuasion the biggest moves forward came about as a result of "ordinary working women" seeking to get what was fair for themselves. These women were the ones really putting themselves on the line through actions which in the short term atleast caused real hardship to themselves and their families.
My mum was in no "intellectual" sense of the world a feminist, infact she would have balked at the suggestion, but I now see the spirit of fairness she had was exactly what the real changes which have occurred were based upon. The text books are written by and support the view of those who wish to take credit and play politics....real change occurred because of the women who just got off their arses and refused to play the game by the rules the men had written. They learnt the men's rule books and then worked out how to stamp all over them, using the very systems the men (and patriarchal unions) had set up.
Another myth the film explodes is the idea that those who effected change were particularly liberated by "the sexual revolution". Many of these women were ordinary, decent women seeking to keep homes and families going as they also earnt money and fought the battles that needed fighting.
Finally, another myth that the film explodes is that the women were having to seperate from men and were not encouraged by them. The film shows the gender issues that did arise, but also how it was extremely encouraging men who got the women to take up their own leadership and make change happen.
This filmfor the first time tells many of us, too young to know anything other than the "official history" of second wave feminism given in text books and BBC 4 documentaries, the truth. We owe our greatest debt not to the intellectuals who were making placards and grand statements about sexism generally but to the ordinary women up and down the country -many working class - who actually stood up against the injustices they were facing through things like the deskilling of their labour.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BULFc72z1dU[/youtube]