Made in Dagenham

Made in Dagenham dramatises the 1968 walkout by women at the Ford car plant in Dagenham, Essex. Sewing car seat covers in sweltering conditions, they discover that their work has been reclassified as unskilled and that they earn far less than the men beside them. Around 187 women stop work, and housewife and mother Rita O'Grady emerges as their leader. She takes on both Ford management and the union hierarchy, and as the dispute drags on and the men are locked out, the solidarity around her starts to fray. The strikers eventually carry their case to Westminster, where the Employment Secretary, Barbara Castle, becomes a key ally in a fight over equal pay that reshaped British law. The film is a comedy-drama based on real events.

Nigel Cole directed from a screenplay by William Ivory. It was Cole's fourth feature, following Saving Grace, Calendar Girls and A Lot Like Love, and it shares with the earlier films a focus on women banding together against institutional indifference. Sally Hawkins plays Rita, with Bob Hoskins as union representative Albert Passingham, Miranda Richardson as Barbara Castle, and Geraldine James, Rosamund Pike and Andrea Riseborough among the supporting cast.

Made on a budget of about 7 million dollars, the film took roughly 13 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.1 out of 10 from around 17,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 6.7 from a much smaller base of 347; critics' rating stands at 6.8 from 129 reviews.