Music: {allcanada} CBC feminism doc insightful

Thursday, February 24, 2011

{allcanada} CBC feminism doc insightful

The three main female characters in the sitcom Perfect Couples are having a chat about the alleged necessity of continuing to "look good for your man," even at home.

"But what about feminism?" one of the characters asks. "What did our weird aunts die for?"

Funny line.

But many of the people featured in the documentary The F Word: Who Wants to be a Feminist? -- which debuts March 3 on CBC as part of the Doc Zone series -- probably would find it more sad than hilarious.

Perfect Couples, of course, is a current show. It debuted earlier this year on NBC and Citytv.

So is that what feminism has become in North America in the 21st century? A punch line?

The F Word, directed by Michael McNamara and produced by Judy Holm, takes a hard look at what feminism has meant in the past and what it means today, if anything.

Notably, feminism has a strict, humourless, unattractive, man-hating connotation for a lot of modern young women, even some who otherwise are quite passionate about female issues.

The doc breaks down the feminist movement into waves of activity, the first of which occurred in the early part of the 20th century, when women were pushing for the right to vote, among other things.

The second feminist movement occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when women with flowers in their hair were burning their bras and demanding things like equal rights and equal pay.

Obviously a certain amount of progress was made in the first two waves of feminism. Today more than half of all North American university students are women, and women make up about half the work force.

But women still take home 20% less pay than men. And according to United Nations statistics, while women comprise 53% of the world's population, they own only 1% of the world's wealth.

This isn't solely about money, though. Attitudes about women, violence toward them and the exploitation of them continue to be massive problems around the world.

And in Canada, there has been a significant erosion of many types of women's services over the past decade.

All told, while some things are better, much work remains to be done. But how are today's women processing those goals?

The F Word insightfully points out that the so-called second wave of feminism in the '60s and '70s -- like most cultural and political movements of that era -- largely was generational. It wasn't just a worthy cause, it also was a way in which young women could rebel against the social attitudes of their mothers. That helped make it cool.

What's never cool is caring collectively about the exact same stuff the previous generation cared about. Young women today may be just as keen to stand up for themselves, but they certainly won't do it in the same way their moms did, just on principle.

In that way -- and this is a personal observation, so don't blame the doc if you don't agree -- the feminist movement faces some of the same age-identification hurdles as the separatist movement in Quebec, and that's not to compare the substance or value of the two movements in any way. Simply put, either aggressively or passively, kids are always going to do their own thing and care about what they think is their own stuff.

As revealed in The F Word, this leaves feminism is an odd place. It's enough to make your weird aunt roll in her grave.