%u2028Not so long ago society refused to take women seriously. Made in Dagenham is the inspiring story of everyday working class women in 1960s Britain who challenged the powerful Ford Motor Company in a struggle for equal pay with the men. Based on the facts, director Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls) dramatizes the story through Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins), a woman who decides she has had enough of being patronized.
With the aid of her wily union steward (Bob Hoskins), O’Grady organizes her coworkers and sends them onto a picket line that drew media attention in the UK and the ire of Ford’s American management, a greedy cabal that puts maximizing profit above all other values. Miranda Richardson plays the lone cabinet minister supporting the factory women in the face of threats from Ford to move their factories elsewhere.
The rabblerousing story embraces the contrary tug of the personal and the political and the divisions between men and women in the labor movement. O’Grady’s strike puts the men out of work by idling the factory. The unstated shadow side of the story is that while the position of women has risen in Western society since the era of Made in Dagenham, the role of organized labor has diminished. At least in 2011, the greedy corporate executives are winning the struggle.
Opens Jan. 21 at the Oriental Theatre.
