Women’s History Month is the perfect time to discover the contributions and experiences of women through film. Here are five feminist feature films and five documentaries through which viewers can celebrate and remember and learn.
The Women (1939)
Some of the most salacious gossip is exchanged at nail salons, gyms, and beauty parlors. George Cukor’s dramedy The Women proves just that, as women converge for their beauty-related appointments. Mary (Norma Shearer) is informed that her husband Stephen (unseen) has taken up with Crystal (Joan Crawford), a perfume counter attendant. It soon becomes a question of whether or not Mary is going to fight for him, and Crystal is up for the challenge. If a musical remake is of interest, check out 1956’s The Opposite Sex, starring June Allyson and Joan Collins and directed by David Miller. There’s also a Diana English-directed remake from 2008.
The Women is a fascinating film in its portrayal of women as one-track minds, who rarely discuss anything besides, well, men. And yet, there isn’t a single man in the cast; they’re all offscreen. Viewers may discuss the centering of men in older films in addition to beauty standards of the era versus today.
Click here to buy your copy of The Women on DVD.
9 to 5 (1980)
As workplace revolts go, they don’t come any funnier than Colin Higgins’ 9 to 5. Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda), Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin), and Doralee Rhodes (Dolly Parton) are all secretaries who have had enough of being chased around the desk, overlooked for promotions, and not being credited for their work. Their wrath revolves particularly around the vice president of the company, Franklin Hart, Jr., played by Dabney Coleman. These women are after fair treatment, better wages, and respect, and their antics (some real and some imagined) are fun to observe. It’s easy to see why this film, best remembered for its legendary anthem composed by Parton, is still synonymous with the daily grind today. (For further viewing, see the documentary on the 1970s labor movement, 9to5: The Story of a Movement)
Click here to buy your copy of 9 to 5 on DVD.
Working Girls (1986)
Molly (Louise Smith) is a sex worker in Lizzie Borden’s independent film Working Girls. Though we hear from her colleagues, Molly’s is our primary perspective. She’s a Yale graduate that lives in Manhattan with her girlfriend, who’s unaware of Molly’s occupation. Part of her profits are given to her madam, Lucy (Ellen McElduff), who runs the brothel out of a swanky high-rise apartment unit whose common area/living room feels like a waiting room. The clients, for their part, are into all sorts of roleplay and interests, and we witness Molly’s various interactions over the course of her shift.
Shot almost like a documentary (without the direct interview-style questions), the film is a clinical, sometimes unexpectedly funny, exploration of a world so often portrayed as dangerous, tawdry, and shameful.
Click here to buy your copy of Working Girls on DVD.
The Joy Luck Club (1993)
It may be surprising to learn that, even by the 90s, so many firsts in film had yet to happen. 1993 saw The Joy Luck Club, the first mainstream American film comprised of an all-Asian main cast, exclusively of whom were women. The cast included four daughters, played by Ming-Na Wen, Rosalind Chao, Lauren Tom, and Tamlyn Tomita, and their mothers, played by Kieu Chinh, Lisa Lu, France Nuyen, and Tsai Chin. This multi-generation film, based on the bestselling novel by Amy Tan, unfolds in a series of vignettes, jumping back and forth between the past in China and present-day San Francisco, visiting the various experiences, tough stuff, and trauma each woman has faced at the hands of society and (unintentionally) of each other.
Click here to stream The Joy Luck Club on Prime Video.
Hidden Figures (2017)
The Space Race was a generation-defining moment, and it took the effort and smarts of countless people, both credited and uncredited, to make it happen, despite the astronauts being the household names. What Theodore Melfi accomplishes with Hidden Figures is bringing some of these brilliant minds forward. Katherine Goble (Taraji P. Henson) works for Langley Research Center as a human calculator. Her colleagues include Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), each fighting her own daily battles with racist and sexist coworkers and managerial higher ups. Beautifully scored and costumed, Hidden Figures is an important story of Black women in STEM and a great jumping off point to delve into other contributions Black women have made to modern living and feminism.
Click here to buy your copy of Hidden Figures on DVD.
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014)
It’s tough to capture the essence of late 1960s/early 1970s intersectional feminism in an hour and a half. But filmmaker Mary Dore covers a lot of ground in She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, presenting archival footage and then-current interviews with legendary figures of the movement, including Kate Millett, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rita Mae Brown, and Denise Oliver-Velez. Some of the events the film covers include the release of Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, the founding of NOW, the Jane Collective, the civil rights movement, and Our Bodies, Ourselves.
This film came out shortly before Tarana Burke coined #MeToo and before the 2016 presidential election, illustrating that the conversation about feminist topics is ever-evolving and continuing.
Click here to stream She's Beautiful When She's Angry on Prime Video.
What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015)
A nuanced telling of a legend’s life, Liz Garbus’ What Happened, Miss Simone? is not your average musician biography. An incredible and beloved entertainer, Nina Simone didn’t fit into a neat, categorically defined box, as a singer or as a celebrity. The film does its best to show her many facets: victor and victim, brilliant, bipolar, activist. Deemed “The High Priestess of Soul”, she used her voice to progress the cause of racial justice in the 1960s, even as it was wearing her down to where she had to leave the United States to protect her peace. Told through interviews with family and friends, What Happened, Miss Simone? is a love letter to a remarkable and complicated woman.
(For more documentaries celebrating Black women, see this list from Ebony in 2025.)
Seeing Allred (2018)
Filmmakers Roberta Grossman and Sophie Sartain, in their documentary Seeing Allred, traverse the life and career of civil rights attorney Gloria Allred. The film demonstrates how ahead of her time she was, discussing sexual misconduct, assorted women’s lib topics, and racial disparities before it was in the mainstream conversation. Allred is known for her boisterous, dominant nature in conversation, evidently viewed as a bad thing as she’s mocked and parodied by numerous male talk show hosts and tv shows. She’s been accused of ambulance chasing and fame seeking by her dissidents, always appearing with the latest spate of victims suing Hollywood bigwigs. The film’s subplot includes the sudden rush of sexual assault allegations against comedian Bill Cosby as they emerged.
Period. End of Sentence. (2018)
A lot is packed into Period. End of Sentence., a short, powerful film directed by Rayka Zehtabchi. In the Hapur District outside New Delhi, menstruation stigma provokes reactions of shy amusement, embarrassment, and shame among women and ignorance or misinformation among men. A challenge for students on their periods is needing to change clothes in the middle of the day, going so far as to drop out of school due to missed time. Some believe that women are dirty while on their periods and shouldn’t be at temple. Other women speak to the unsanitary practice of using just any piece of cloth. Enter The Pad Project, a nonprofit whose mission, in part, is to create effective, affordable pads. Women are taught to use a simple pad making machine before going into production themselves, manufacturing thousands of pads which they’ll go on to sell to stores or via word of mouth. As the film shows, this approach to dispensing menstrual care and education is as much of a public service as a business venture.
Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print (2025)
The complexity of legacy is traversed in Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print. Told in three parts, each director (Alice Gu, Cecilia Aldarondo, Salima Koroma) presents a different facet of the feminist magazine’s five-decade history from its inception in the early 1970s to its role today. The film revisits the then-novel topics the magazine covered (or, in retrospect, didn’t cover enough), including oral contraception, domestic abuse, pornography, Black women writers, men’s rights activism, orgasms, and more. Core editors of the publication, including, among others, Gloria Steinem, Pat Carbine, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, recount the era in both recent and archival interviews.
(This film, on its own, was reviewed by Video Librarian last year.)
These movies are suitable for film studies classes and public library screenings alike. Some of these films portray themes of, among others, sexism, misogynism, harassment, assault, racism, and ableism. It’s suggested that viewers check in advance for any upsetting themes if appropriate sensitivity and awareness is warranted; in other words, practice self care.
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