Film Title: Woman’s Empowerment

Company: Independent Lens

Age Range: High school

Includes Teaching Materials

Topic: Women’s Empowerment

Subject Areas: Social Studies, Global Studies, Civics, Economics, Government, Political Science, Sociology, World History, Language Arts, Geography, Women’s Studies, Media Studies

Film Synopsis: This DVD examines key social and political issues impacting women through curriculum and supporting videos. From an indigenous Bolivian leader fighting for labor rights to a young Israeli-Arab karate champion with feminist ideas, from three Egyptian women working for fair elections to a Kenyan woman leading a nationwide environmental movement, these 4 documentaries explore stories of women’s empowerment and leadership in the world.

Running Time and Sections: 4 different women, 8 different sections—about an hour

Alex’s Review:

This DVD portrays the struggle to fight for your beliefs in the eyes of four very different women. Wangari Maatha is a Kenyan woman who fights her country’s dictator by herself for her fellow people. One woman stands up against a power-hungry dictator, and wins. After years of rallying people and doing non-violent acts of protest, Maatha is able to correctly portray a ruler and truly help the people of Kenya. After I watched her section, I wrote “speechless” in my notes; this story was truly inspiring. In Bolivia, there is an organization called “PLANE” which helps employ women. When election time rolls around, the PLANE organization is in serious trouble of losing its funding and the women must fight to keep their jobs. Three, seemingly well off, women from Egypt join together and create “shayfeen.com.” This website is the place of action when there are elections in Egypt or anything dealing with the people of Egypt being treated unfairly. If these women are successful in getting the attention of another country’s president, you can only imagine all the things they will achieve for their country. And finally, the DVD ends with introducing you to Shadya from Israel; she is a young feminist and she fights, literally (she does karate) to maintain power over her life in the customs of the Israeli people.

Being a female myself, I felt a little bias towards the DVD. I found each story to be quite remarkable and would suggest this DVD to anyone. I think it was quite genius for the makers of this DVD to have divided the movie into sections. There are four different women and eight different sections. So, each woman gets two sections and each one leaves the watcher with questions and makes you want to see how everything ends. Also, apparently this DVD is just clips and a summary of actual full-length movies about these women; I can only imagine what they would be like and I suggest that you should watch them.