
I'm known around the traps at the "feminist hater", which I personally find hilarious because anyone who knows me knows that I believe women are equal to men, not "should be", or "have to keep fighting to be viewed as" but actually, RIGHT NOW equal to men. I simply believe that women need to claim that understanding for themselves.
There is a FANTASTIC scene in this movie that illustrates my point exactly. The main protagonist, a tiny, mousey woman named Rita O'Grady, finds herself thrust into the leadership role of a group of women machinists for the Ford Car Manufacturing plant in Dagenham. To everyone's surprise, not least her own, she discovers a fierce inner voice and fighting force that leads these women into strike action, drawing ire from almost everyone around them. In one scene her own husband is all but pleading her to stop her fight, and in his monologue he points out to her that he doesn't go down the pub and drink all their money away, or cheat on her, or beat her and their children,. In other words, he does better by her than so many men in their community do by their wives.
Instead of being grateful that he is such a good husband and father, she vehemently retorts that living without abuse is her RIGHT, not a privilege bestowed upon her by a benevolent husband.

The women of Dagenham, who are briefly featured in person in the closing credits, were just regular, not highly educated women, who were not concerned with how words were spelled to entrench the patriarchy or whether or not shaving their legs signified male oppression. They wanted fair acknowledgement for the work they did, they work they had to do to put food in their children's bellies. While the comfortable middle-classes organise petitions and use fancy words to dance predatory circles around one another, these women put their jobs on the line for acknowledgement.

Only people with everything to lose are willing to risk everything for a slim chance of winning and the women of Dagenham reeled in a winner for women around the world!
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