The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Cartoon shows male worker in a bar having some after-work beers with his buddies while his wife scrambles to do the shopping, crams herself onto already overfilled bus; the man returns home, shucks his clothes except his boxer shorts and tank top to watch TV and drink beer while his wife runs around him to fix dinner.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Graphic shows disparities between men and women in the decision-making bodies of governments in the world; the U.S. has the worst ratio of female representation among developed nations listed; graphic also shows the severe under-representation of women in decision-making posts in the United Nations.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Egyptian journalist Nawal El Sadaawi says women are outside military power, so they must have power in civil governments to make up for it, but they don't as yet.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Journalist Beatrix Campbell says that women need to develop a strong feminist political agenda encompassing all areas of society because businesses are so dominated by men.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
1968 strike by women workers (Ford Sewing Machinists Strike in Britain) demanding equal pay rates; shots of strikers on picket line; shots of strike leaders having tea with British Employment Minister Barbara Castle. This is the strike credited with leading to the UK Equal Pay Act 1970.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Aerial of a British factory zone; VO says British women still haven't gotten equal pay. Small group of women workers striking at a British Ford factory for equal pay, leaders entering a meeting with the company; woman strike leader complaining that for 17 years women at the plant were kept in "B-grade" classification as unskilled workers regardless of skilled work they performed, until they fought to get arbitration of their grievance; women in the group discussing the process of fighting for grade changes and the growing independence and willingness of women to organize and fight even in the face of continued defeats-- they are optimistic that their victory is the start of larger changes.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Large United States military cargo jet plane taxiing on a runway in heavy fog; Cruise Missile components are unloaded; VO says the U.N. Women's Decade also set peace as a goal. Women scaling chain-link and barbed wire fence of Greenham Common air base in Great Britain to occupy it in protest of United States cruise missiles being located there; women sing, hold musical instruments, protest; woman protester saying that women shouldn't allow men to use "protecting women" as an excuse for war-- women will go out and fight for peace; women occupying the air base constructing a large peace quilt, audio of folk anti-war song. Peace movement, anti-war, women, protest, militarism, Cold War.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Shantytown in Ahmadabad, India; Hindu women hammering & crafting metal goods; VO says these workers were at margins of the economic system and barred from regular labor unions, so they made their own unions; women weavers carrying folded bundles of cloth; Indian Muslim woman sewing a quilt in her home-- subtitled interview, the woman describing gains made by women after organizing their labor collectively; woman buying eggplant at open-air market; VO says female vegetable vendors were hurt in past by not having access to fair credit at reasonable rates, so they collectivized; woman balancing large sack on her head, walking from market; Indian women working in the office of the collective bank which they started (SEWA), a woman getting fingerprinted during loan application in lieu of signing it; another woman receives cash from a loan window.
The Woman's Decade: Beyond Beginnings
Ela Bhati Sewa says that a cultural obstacle was convincing women to assert themselves instead of thinking in traditional gender roles. Meeting of the women's collective in India. Ms. Sewa says that organizing must precede power.