The Divine Order

The other day I went to see a movie in an open air cinema. My mum, a friend of her and I sat down on the chairs right next to a lake and it immediately started to rain. Good thing we all knew before how swiss summer nights can be, so we brought a blanket and raincoats. There where some other people around us but most of the rows stayed empty. Which is a bummer. Because I think more people should see that movie. We went to see “The Divine Order”. It’s okay if you have never heard of that movie because we actually went to see “Die göttliche Ordnung”. That isn’t a big Hollywood blockbuster but a movie that was produced in Switzerland and is originally in Swiss German. It got translated into German and I hope it will get translated into English too. It was released this march and it already won several prices in Switzerland and it got submitted for an Oscar nomination (Best Foreign Language Film). The movie takes place in a small town in Switzerland in 1971. Still a time of conflict and change, everybody shouted down with this and down with that. Well, not everybody. A growing group of international students shouted “up” for something. But that’s a different story.

The changes that the world sees don’t really affect small swiss villages. Nora is a young housewife that lives together with her husband and two sons in such a small village. She is kind of happy with her life although she would like to start to work part time again. But her husband doesn’t want her to and so it isn’t possible because the law says that a married woman needs the permission of her husband to get a job. The other thing that isn’t possible for a woman in Switzerland at that time is to vote. Yes, 45 years ago women in Switzerland weren’t aloud to vote. Not proud of that part of the history of my country.

On February 7th 1971 the men in Switzerland are going to have the opportunity to vote in a ballot on women’s suffrage. In Nora’s little town the people know what the divine order says. Women belong to the kitchen and shouldn’t speak up in politics. Or anywhere else for that matter. But Nora starts to question this. Is it fair that men make the law that affects everybody in the country? So she attends a demonstration in Zurich where young women hold up posters and chant “women’s rights are human rights”. She organises a meeting where she wants to inform her community about the topic. But she only faces refusal. Her sons get bullied in school because their mother is a women’s libber. Not even her husband stands with her when the townspeople make fun of her. So together with a small group of women she decides to go on strike. More and more women follow them and leave their families to live together in a unused restaurant. If this is going to change the men’s opinion? Or is it just going to tear apart families and a whole village?

I was sitting there, slowly getting drenched and all I could think of was thank you. Thank you to all the women who fought for my rights. To all the people who didn’t lean back and accepted the world how it was. To everybody who made it possible that I can get my voice heard now, that I can do what I want without asking my dad or my husband first. I even teared up a bit when I saw all those strong and passionate women standing up for their rights and shouting out their anger at the demonstration in Zurich. I could say it was just rain on my face. But it wasn’t. Seeing passionate people always gets me. And seeing the movie reminded me that most of the things that we take for granted now have their roots in passionate people standing up. And I hope that I will leave a legacy like that. That I can change the world too. Because there’s still no equality between genders. There’s still a need to stand up for justice in general and continue the journey of those brave women. We should use our rights and possibilities that they fought for to make the world an even better place for our daughters and sons. Because having rights comes with obligations and responsibilities.

Trailer (in swiss german): http://www.goettlicheordnung.ch/

#Switzerland #Movies #Sufrage