‘Made in Dagenham’: Because that’s the way it should be!

But don’t be fooled by the clichés, for in director Nigel Cole’s whimsical film about the first seeds of female empowerment, this formula works beautifully and delivers one of the most heart-warming and impregnable stories that is based on fact. To be honest, how can such a film go wrong, when deep down we know that female equality is a right, not a privilege, as lead character Rita so articulately explains to her clueless husband.

Set in suburban London in 1968, the film takes as its focal point 187 women machinists working at the Dagenham Ford Motor Company. Their working conditions remind one of the sweatshops that we are used to seeing in the Third World; laboring in the heat, they have to take off their clothes in order to get through the day. One day their union organizer Albert (Bob Hoskins who is as adorable as a teddy bear) tells them to go on strike for a day in order to prevent unpaid overtime. The ladies agree, and they send two representatives, Connie and Rita, to join Albert and Ford’s union representative Monty (Kenneth Cranham) to negotiate with the Ford executives. The ladies are told to keep their mouths shut, but then Rita suddenly decides to speak up -- not only does she want to be paid overtime, but asks for something which was at the time preposterous to all “sensible” men of power: equal pay for the female workers. Rita claims that their job is a semi-skilled vocation and demands to be paid the same rates as the men. Little does she know that this first outburst will change the trajectory of labor laws not only in England but in other countries as well.

Though Albert is sympathetic to the cause due to his upbringing by his single mother, Monty, who is more of a company man than a union man, is fuming: How dare these women ask for equal pay? But soon enough the unrest and commotion is followed by the Labour Party’s Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s First Secretary of State Barbara Castle (played by the brilliant Miranda Richardson), a fiery redhead who is known as “the man with the biggest balls” in the cabinet.

The journey of empowerment is not an easy one as Rita and her coworkers -- who act more like life companions than colleagues -- face many battles with the Ford executives, their unions and the men in their personal lives. Even for these strong and bold women, it’s not an easy task to convince their husbands to march in the streets for the movement. But support is found in unlikely places and people, one of which is a well-educated classy woman, Lisa Hopkins (Rosamund Pike), who happens to look like a well-tamed wife of one of the Ford executives. Plus, the ladies have endurance; as Barbara Castle tells her own chauvinistic employees, “You just expect women will do what you tell them to do.”

This is one of those films you have to watch when you’re glum and think that nothing will change in the world, for William Ivory’s humorous and humanistic screenplay and Cole’s vivacious directing tell a true, uplifting and appropriately righteous story in which justice is found by those who endure and never give up. Yes, thanks to these women many corporations around the world were forced to change their policies and administer the equal pay act. Certainly there are moments of schmaltzy tears and unnecessary close-ups that will exploit your vulnerability, but never do they get in the way of the power of the film’s indisputably correct intention.

With an outstanding ensemble cast, the film is carried on the shoulders of three actresses. Sally Hawkins performs impeccably as an ordinary woman whose frailty never gets in the way of her principles, Richardson shows off her guns as the woman of power who welcomes her responsibilities and Pike oozes a certain kind of rarity of grace that accommodates her steel stance against bullies of any kind.

It’s not a new thing that corporations are always concerned with profit, as it was for Ford. And yes, the world is still not a happy place, in which the same horrible working conditions of the ‘60s in the West have now shifted to economically underdeveloped countries. Yet “Made in Dagenham” reminds one that there’s always a way and a will to make it better.