When it comes to storytelling, film is a powerful medium. With visuals, we get pulled into the heart of a story; we take part at the same time that we learn. Skilled documentary filmmakers know the art of getting across a complex idea in a tangible way, one that’s not only informative but also touching. They can make us cry, they can make us laugh, most most importantly, hopefully they inspire us to take action.

If you care about women and women’s rights, there are some excellent documentaries out there, not only about women, but also directed and produced by women. That’s a good thing, because while the world of media is male dominated, with top grossing films often directed by and depicting men, the independent documentary world is more balanced, with women more likely to work on independent films and documentaries. In fact, 39 percent of directors working on independently produced documentaries in 2011-2012 were women.

Compare that with the dismal statistics of women and girls around the world: “Sixty-six million are currently out of school; 150 million are sexually assaulted each year; and in the past 30 seconds, about 13 were forced into arranged marriages,” as PureWow recently pointed out. We can’t have enough films about these topics. Films that addresses the state of women around the world are essentials to helping us pave the way forward.

The more films by and about women, the more we support women in general. Here are some excellent ones to start with.

1. Miss Representation

Why do we have certain images of women in the media? Miss Representation takes a look at that question, showing the link between gender inequality in power positions in media, and how that perpetuates stereotyped gender roles in our culture. Produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom – who we interviewed around the time the film cam out – it is a compelling look at the under representation of women from media to politics, and a call to action for those of us who want to make change.

2. Girl Rising

The format of Girl Rising is unique: it’s a film about the stories of nine girls from nine countries written by nine writers and performed by nine actresses. The equivalent of a short story collection, each segment features the real girl acting out an episode of her own life, giving us an intimate view of what girls around the world are up against.

3. To Educate a Girl

In 2000, 110 million children in the world were not in school—two thirds of them were girls. Moved by this statistic, two filmmakers Frederick Rendina and Oren Rudavsky traveled to Nepal and Uganda to find out what it actually takes to educate a girl. To Educate a Girl is a look at the lives of young women who are working hard to achieve their dreams despite living in situations of conflict and poverty.

4. Invisible War

Soldiers in the military are up against a lot, their everyday jobs often being physically and emotionally taxing. But for some it’s even worse than that. In fact, a female U.S. soldier in a combat zone is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. Invisible War is an investigative documentary about the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the U.S. military, a difficult topic, but one that’s necessary to talk about.

5. Half the Sky Movement

Not a traditional big screen film, Half the Sky Movement is a four-hour PBS series that was shot in ten different countries to show women and girls living under the most difficult circumstances imaginable, yet fighting to change them. Inspired by the powerful book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the film isn’t just a film, it’s a call to arms to end the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.

Want more? The National Organization for Women has an excellent extensive roundup of films about global women’s rights that are all well worth a watch.

Image courtesy of Miss Representation

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Help women and you help the world. It’s a philosophy gaining traction among international development gurus who say women in the global south are the best providers for their families and communities. According to a New York Times Magazine article by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published last August, women in the developing world are often more responsible than men when it comes to managing money in the home, making them prime beneficiaries for microfinance loans.

“In general, aid appears to work best when it is focused on health, education and microfinance (although microfinance has been somewhat less successful in Africa than in Asia),” write Kristof and WuDunn. “And in each case, crucially, aid has often been most effective when aimed at women and girls; when policy wonks do the math, they often find that these investments have a net economic return. Only a small proportion of aid specifically targets women or girls, but increasingly donors are recognizing that that is where they often get the most bang for the buck.”

In their book Half the Sky, named for a Chinese saying that “Women hold up half the sky,” Kristof and WuDunn argue for an increased focus on women and girls when it comes to international aid, maintaining that countries with pitiful track records on women’s rights are also the countries most mired in poverty and extremism. Fix the former and you fix the latter, they say.

Kristof and WuDunn provide a compelling argument. But their philosophy should go one further: in addition to reducing poverty, helping women also helps the environment. According to a recent article in The Jakarta Post, the Indonesian Environmental Ministry has begun offering classes to women in Yogyakarta and Central Java about water conservation. Since women provide food for their families, they’re also the ones who acquire water each day. “In almost every village, it is a woman’s responsibility to provide water, whether as a mother or daughter,” says Linda Amalia Sari Gumelar, the Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Minister. Public works agencies that build water projects ignore the needs of women at their own peril. “Planners should be aware of the different conditions: women on foot and men on motorcycles. In housework, water is closely-related to domestic work. Distances between water sources and settlements should be calculated carefully.”

Since women transport water, and then use it to cook and clean for their families, they make natural gatekeepers for water sources, the first-line-of-defense conservationists who can teach their peers how to make their daily water portion go further. Though the true impact of the Environmental Ministry water protection classes in Indonesia has yet to be realized, focusing on the environment by focusing on women is smart policy. Women hold up half the sky – it’s true. And if we let them, it’ll be a cleaner sky at that.

Image: ESP Indonesia

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