Women's Monumental Struggle
Suffragette

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4586
Date Written:  2016-03-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21364

Barbara Winslow and Alison Baldree respond to Sarah Gavron's controversial 2015 film Suffragette.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

One of the strengths of the movie is that Suffragette is not the story of the "established" leaders, the Pankhursts, even though Streep has a star cameo. The movie takes place mainly in London's East End, a diverse, working-class immigrant community. Suffragette's protagonist, Maud Watts is a married mother who works in a laundry. All the women scrub. All the bosses are men.

She embodies the experiences most working women faced and face today - the double shift: low and unequal wages, long hours, backbreaking labor, sexual harassment and dangerous working conditions. She comes home to a tiny, dingy poorly lit, badly heated flat to shop, cook, clean and take care of a husband and son.

Maud, a very conventional working-class woman, is drawn into the WSPU's orbit after witnessing (and enjoying) window breaking in the more middle-class West End of London. She ends up testifying about the horrendous working conditions women face in the East End, joins demonstrations and attends meetings.