Women of color who are workers don’t weigh heavily in the American cultural imagination. When women of color appear in films, they tend to be secondary characters in low-paying jobs. Rarely do we see movies about working women who happen to be women of color.
This repost by Amber Leab appears as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.
Yesterday was Labor Day here in the U.S., and we wanted to highlight some films about working women.
When I sat down to write this post, I thought it would be relatively easy: brainstorm and research a list of movies about working women. But the more I searched, the more frustrating the list became. I kept coming across the same movies. These movies:
9 to 5
Baby Boom
Boomerang
Broadcast News
Clockwatchers
The Devil Wears Prada
Disclosure
Erin Brockavich
Frozen River
His Girl Friday
Julia
Legally Blonde
Mahogany
Maid in Manhattan
Marnie
Mildred Pierce
Network
North Country
The Proposal
Secretary
Silkwood
The Ugly Truth
Wendy and Lucy
Woman of the Year
Working Girl
The women featured in these films–the protagonists–are overwhelmingly white. Where are the women of color?
Professions in which women work–every imaginable profession–aren’t widely represented. Most of the women here have Careers rather than Jobs, although the careers are heavily in the secretarial /assistant arena. In the newer films, the women who are working class, as
Caryn James points out in Slate‘s XXFactor, are heavy on criminality:
The Hollywood working-class heroine is usually a Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich, a reformer making a grand social gesture. The new indie films more authentically depict their characters’ workaday lives. That’s why it’s so disappointing to find them undermining their own heroines, reinforcing an assumption that should have been blasted away long ago—that the poor are morally suspect and quick to steal.
Nobody gets ruder treatment than career women, who are routinely portrayed as bossy, uptight and utterly without personal lives. What they need, we’re supposed to think, is a man. But before they can get one, they must have a mortifying comeuppance.
These observations on my incomplete list lead me to a few questions:
How do we define “movies about working women”? First, I want differentiate movies that feature women who work from movies about working women. The former category could include almost any contemporary movie with a major female character. But, movies that are thematically about working women are a different, rarer thing. They question what it means to be a working woman in a culture that is both dependent upon and hostile to them.
How do we define “working woman?” A working woman is not a rare thing; nearly all women work. Women have professional careers and jobs of all sorts. There are lawyers, teachers, doctors, writers, police…the list is endless. Try to argue that a woman who cares for her children isn’t a working woman, even though, I suspect, many people tend to equate work with wage. How do we define work? What does our definition of work and its role in our lives mean for women? Does it mean something different for men? Do you think of yourself as a “worker”?
And a couple of possible conclusions:
Women of color who are workers don’t weigh heavily in the American cultural imagination. When women of color appear in films, they tend to be secondary characters in low-paying jobs. Rarely do we see movies about working women who happen to be women of color. Rarely have I seen it, at least, which may be a personal failing.
All in all, I’m not very happy with this list, and I’d love to enlist your help in making it more complete.
Readers, help out! What are some of your favorite movies about working women?
*Remember, we’re not just talking about movies that feature women who work, but ones that explore what it means to be a working woman.
UPDATE: Readers have contributed additional films to the list. Here they are so far (we’ll continue to add any films you suggest):
All About Eve
The Apartment
Cleo from 5 to 7
Dancer in the Dark
Easter Parade
Gypsy
Mr. Mom
Places in the Heart
Showgirls
Sunshine Cleaning
Waitress
Winter’s Bone
I would never say that a stay-at-home-mom isn’t a working woman. I just would like to point out that, when discussing “working women”, we don’t solely discuss her activities – we are discussing workplace politics, the “buddy-system”, function deviation, being underpaid, being misconstrued as a shrew or ineffectual, among others.
The issues facing a stay-at-home-mom are tough, but are of a different nature entirely. They concern her psychological and emotional well being, her desire or lack there of to work outside the home, her relationship to her children and husband. I don’t know if there has been one, but maybe a week of Stay-at-home-moms on film could be interesting!
How about The Desk Set, Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion and For a Good Time, Call…? Again, not movies about working women of colour, but still some worth adding to the list.