There is a new film out, with a fairly strong, leftie vibe about it, called Made in Dagenham, celebrating the campaign by women factory workers in the late 1960s to get the same pay as their male counterparts. It sounds such a self-evidently just cause that no doubt any film-goers will come out of the cinema nodding to themselves about the rightness of the cause and the evil of the chauvinist, exploiter bastards who presided over the previous, unjust state of affairs. Throw in lots of period costumes and some nice background music and this is a sort of feelgood movie, in a way.
The trouble is, as I suspect readers will tell, is that the situation is not quite as simple as all that. As Tim Worstall occasionally likes to point out, a lot of the supposed injustice involved in lower pay for women for doing the same jobs as men has a perfectly rational basis, however politically unpalatable it might be to say so. Here is another one of his articles over in the Guardian (brave man, is Tim).
In part, it is worth remembering that in the far more unionised labour market of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, a lot of the resistence to women entering the workforce to do the same work as men came from male trade union members, not from the firms. And companies, realising that many women are as talented, if not a damn sight more so, than the men, obviously realised that they could attract such workers willing to work for a slightly lower wage than their male counterparts. Outside unionised businesses, such a difference was likely to be even more marked. It reminds me of the fact that the labour movement, with such features like the closed shop, has often been at odds with the Left’s alleged concerns for things such as equality between the sexes and races. I would be interested to know if this aspect of the labour movement comes out in the film.
I suspect that, absent labour market restrictions such as closed shops and other deliberate barriers to entry, women’s pay would have approached that of the men much faster than it did, but for reasons adduced by the likes of Tim Worstall, there will remain gaps which cannot be blamed on the free market.
Several years ago, and interesting indie movie was made in Detroit which chronicled the problems that black women employees had breaking into traditionally-male union rates and trades in the Big Three auto companies.
Once again, it was not the companies that kept the women out, but their union ‘brothers’. Some of the indiginities these women suffered at the hands of their male co-workers are difficult to believe. To this day, the higher-paying rates, in the skilled trades, are so overwhelmingly male that it’s hard to give much credence to the UAW’s slogans about equality and solidarity.
I will see if I can’t find a website for the production – I’m a little hampered in that I can’t recall the title, buit it will come to me.
llater,
llamas
This film illustrates the classic difference between Britain and America, and why we have no film industry to speak of. Where are the spaceships? Where are the blue people in 3D? Where is the exciting climactic CGH-soaked spectacular finale?
No, all we can produce is careworn looking women in shabby overalls being “heartwarming”. This is what you get when you eschew the free market for grant-supported worthiness. Which inevitably has to have a leftie messidge.
It reminds me of a blog article I read some time ago about how the Finnish independent film Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning- a Star Trek spoof made by a guy and his friends in his flat (and highly recommended, by the way)- is the most successful movie in Finnish history. As the writer put it (I’m paraphrasing from memory here) that’s because their state-supported “industry” just makes movies about miserable people staring out of windows.
The parochialism, self-absorbed nature of shit like this maddens me.
CGH is like CGI, but a bit less so.
As if most of those CGI/H productions don’t carry the same lefty messidge. BTW Ian, that blue-people-in-3D chain you just yanked, it was mine. Have you even watched that piece of excrement? NIS20 down the drain (I will grudgingly give them the remaining 17 for visuals – they were impressive).
Well actually Alisa, I stole it off the internet and was much relieved I hadn’t paid to see it. I was also glad that I’d saved James Cameron from being corrupted by my money, since he despises capitalism so much. As such, in that case I felt that piracy was my moral duty 😉
Ghastly, awful movie. Interestingly his Utopian-leftist ideology blinded him to making a much more interesting movie. The planet was so perfect, of course they wouldn’t want to leave their land. But suppose they’d been an impoverished, starving tribe wracked by disease and famine, with the offer of modernity? That would have made for an interesting dilemma to base the movie story on.
True about the alternative plot – haven’t thought of that.
You missed the visuals then, which I guess makes you and Cameron even anyway:-)
Perry, I am also smited on Paul’s post – would you be so kind?
“Throw in lots of period costumes and some nice background music”
…not to mention Rosamund Pike. Hubba hubba.
I highly recommend Wendy McIlroy’s “Freedom, Feminism and The State”. One of the essays goes into the origins of male domination of industrial jobs. It was the Unions in the UK in the first half of the 18th century. Women were excluded from most jobs by the Unions partly to decrease the size of the labor pool.
I forget much of the detail as I read this essay decades ago, but it is well worth digging up if you want to see a well researched history of how women went from relative equality in the countryside to second class citizen in the city.
Correction. I meant 19th century, not 18th!
I take it that film wasn’t made by Michael Moore?
As it is, “Made in Dagenham” was no doubt made with the help of the Film Council, now cut by the vicious Tories. I wonder how the £85k Head of Diversity will manage?
“Hubba hubba.”
Does anyone actually say that anymore?
On the subject of pay, gander this link, apparently your UK govt wants to be the paymaster for every person in the kingdom.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39265847
The scary thing is that the entire media (both broadcasters from the BBC to Classic FM) to the newspapers (from the Daily Mirror to the Daily Telegraph) is talking up the film – offering free tickets (and so on).
This is how success (for the film and its leftist message) is manufactured.
The media corruption is not the true source of the problem – the common left cultural position of the media reflects the education system. And the education system is rotten to the core.
Johnathon, I disagree with your last sentence in your article. You just don’t get it, socialistically, do you? You can always blame everything on capitalism and free enterprise, if you try hard enough! The fact that unions were chauvanistic can be blamed on the male-centric society in which they lived, which polluted their minds! The capitalist male-centric society! See how it’s done?
Are UK state-sponsored movies as spectacularly unprofitable ventures as their Australian counterparts? It’s fairly standard for government-funded movies in Australia to cost two or three million dollars to produce, and then go on to take $10,000 or $15,000 at the box office.
James-
Usually. Occasionally one of them fits into a kind of quaintness zeitgeist (Chariots Of Fire, Billy Elliot) and has some success, and that it then used to justify the continued churning out of worthy crap.
“Does anyone actually say [Hubba Hubba] anymore?”
I do. But then again, I’m a 1911 man in a 2011 world.
Well, I bought Valhalla Rising on dvd (entirely based on the cool-looking cover, to my shame) and it has already proved value for money as I have had to watch it 4 times just to find out what the hell it was about. It was funded by the “film councils” of about 5 nations and the EU.
I’m still not sure what the point of the film is, I may have to watch it again, with director’s commentary. That’s 15 hours for GBP4.99.
Wh00ps, is you want to send me GBP4.99, I’ll be happy to send you enough junk to waste 15 hours. In fact, make it 9.99 and I’ll send you 30 hours!
Anyone reminded by the recent film “the Boat That Rocked”?
For those who missed it, it covered pirate radio similar to Radio Caroline. Unlike the original (closed down by the fascist jackboot of Tony Benn) the station in the film gets closed down by a nasty Tory.
I would expect the unions to get a free pass.