It’s been a while since I’ve watched a documentary, but while flipping through Netflix one night, I seen this one pass me up on my list and figured why not. It seemed like it had an interesting enough topic and it had interviews with more than a few people that I knew about and respected so I decided to give this one a chance. Keep reading to see if it was actually worth it or not.
The Women’s List is basically setup as an interview with 15 different women who are considered to be extraordinary in their own way. Each of them will tell you about their own individual struggles as well their triumphs in a world that is still kind of ruled by men. Each of these women have had to overcome discrimination and challenges in order to make their voices heard.
When it comes to this documentary I enjoyed hearing different aspects of these women’s lives and I thought that most of the people that they had interviewed were worthy of being on this so called “Women’s List.” Some of them on the other hand, seemed like they were just placed there because PBS couldn’t get anyone else for this documentary that they wanted to make. Are Madeleine Albright, Gloria Allred, Elizabeth Holmes, Nia Wordlaw, and Aimee Mullens extraordinary people? In their own right yes, they are all extraordinary women who do extraordinary things. Do I think the creator of Spanx, Sara Blakely, is extraordinary? Not so much. That also has to go for some of the other women who were on this list as well. While I felt that some celebrity names deserved to be there like Shonda Rhimes and Betsey Johnson, there were others that felt a little off and kind of threw off the rest of the documentary.
It’s clear that the stars of this documentary are the women that were interviewed. While some of them tell some interesting stories about their struggles and how they came to be who they are, some felt out of place and it made the documentary suffer just a little bit. I more than once questioned why certain people were interviewed because it seems like they weren’t the ground breakers in their respected industries, just the most popular at that time.
Overall I give this movie a 2.5 out of 5.
Not the best documentary about women in different industries, but not the worst either. I think that a few more women could have been interviewed to make this documentary feel complete and that some of the people could have been excluded. I also think that instead of going with who PBS thought was popular at the time to get more views they should have went to the original ground breakers in some of the industries. For the most part it was an interesting watch, but I will say that it’s not for everyone and more than once I was checking to see how much time was left on the documentary before it was over.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 