Here is an interesting documentary that I recently came across apparently just in time for International Women’s Day (sorry I have other things on my mind and that particular day slipped my memory recently). The documentary is entitled “Makers”:

The tag-line for the trailer peaked my interest which read “Women got fed up with bad sex and being secretaries.” I watched the trailer hoped to be at least the bit intrigued to at least want to watch the documentary itself. Alas, this trailer failed. It is particularly interesting because

1. the tag-line introducing the trailer
2. the women introduced in much of the first half of the video are all white*

*(Oh but except Barbara Smith… she appears to be the one women of color before the trailer appears to enter the 21st century).

I find this tag-line particularly confusing since it was mostly white women in the first half and then one black woman, who is also a lesbian, and not to say that black women or lesbians weren’t/aren’t sexual beings. However, with the messages being sent by the other women (“you had to get married and have children”) suggest that, at the time, were limited to heterosexual marriages due to the fact that the images of relationships/marriages portrayed in this trailer were mostly white/heterosexual relationships/marriages. So, I guess only white women were fed up with bad sex and since racialized/Indigenous women still don’t have equal opportunities in employment, again, it was pre-dominantly white women who are fed up with being secretaries.

Yes I am bit skeptical about this documentary even if it does appear prima facie to include women from other backgrounds. I mean, there is the inclusion of Facebook COO’s Sheryl Sandberg. Yes, the “unofficial figurehead of women in business.” (globe and mail, 2013). However, she does not represent just any women in business; rather, only women in business who disclose their plans for future families to their employers or perhaps who intend to apply to companies, who she casually suggested, should be asking about female employees’ future baby-making plans. We all know how important it is to know when that baby making business happens!

So hey, thank god white women got tired of bad sex and being secretaries because we would have never made it this far today where another white woman in the C-suite is telling companies that they should directly ask women about their family/baby-making plans! Yay for progress!