A Documentary to Form Crack in Glass Ceiling: Lasikatto

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Finn director Mari Soppela and her team are making a documentary called “Lasikatto” about the “glass ceiling” that prevents women from advancing in the business life all over the world.

Planned to be released in 2019, the documentary opens with Hillary Clinton’s famous speech she delivered in 2008: “Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it has about 18 million cracks in it and the light is shining through like never before”.

The documentary team met with women from the Netherlands to the US and heard their experiences. Now, they are trying to reach out to the women in Turkey.

Speaking to bianet, Soppela says, “the women interviewed all suffer from unspoken rules and dynamics in the working place. The higher the ladder or the more ambitious the woman is the thicker the glass ceiling is”.

Which countries do the women whom you interviewed for the documentary film Lasikatto, come from?

The project started from Finnish director Mari Soppela interviewing Finnish women across Europe: Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Russia, Estonia, Poland, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Hungary, Britain, Ireland, France, Cyprus (Turkey), Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Greece. Pretty much every country in Europe.

Then we expanded to other nationalities and have interviewed women from The Netherlands, the USA, Finland, Iceland, Britain, South-Korea, Turkey, China, Bhutan and Nicaragua. Not as many as we did with the Finnish women though. 

We are still looking for women from Europe, Turkey and South Korea. 

Did these women have different experiences depending on which countries they come from? Or did they explain similar experiences and struggle strategies? Are these country specific or global, what is your opinion?

The glass ceiling is a phenomenon that divides women from men in the workplace. On average women earn less, do not rise to leading positions, work part-time and often take care of families at the cost of their careers. In 2017, women are 200 years away from economic equality.

We use The Economist Magazine’s glass ceiling index as one of our sources in the film. Since 2013, The Economist publishes its glass ceiling index which measures the economic travails of working women across the world in various dimensions. Such as gender wage gap, paid maternity leave, child-care costs, women on company boards and in parliaments. There are big differences among the 29 OECD countries surveyed. The Nordic countries are on top and countries such as South-Korea, Japan and Turkey are on bottom. But for instance The Netherlands is number 23 and 

But the women interviewed all suffer from unspoken rules and dynamics in the working place. The higher the ladder or the more ambitious the woman is the thicker the glass ceiling is. 

On the website, we see that Finland’s first female president Tarja Halonen says “You might like to think twice whether a glass ceiling is worth breaking… You tend to have a scarred face by breaking through.” I get similar answers when I interviewed journalist women about glass ceiling in Turkey. Can you tell us what kind of difficulties women face, once they broke the glass ceiling?

There is no point in breaking the glass ceiling if no other woman follows you. That’s what president Halonen meant. As president, she was critisied for her looks, the way she talks, the way she walks, even her sexuality was in the tabloids. Hillary Clinton talks a lot about it in her book What Happened. Women are being criticised for the most stupid things. If you talk too loud you’re too strong, if you talk too softly you’re too weak. But in general whatever glass ceiling we break it should become the norm. That it would become normal to have a female president, without the gender title in front.

Is Turkey included in the documentary? Did you carry out a research or talk to any women from Turkey?

We are trying to reach out to Turkish women but have so far got few responses. 

Besides the documentary, you created the Lasikatto Club. What does this Club do specifically? How can women join or contribute to this community?

On Lasikatto.Club we share news about the developments on the glass ceiling and updates of the film. We write profiles of men and women across the world and send a newsletter once a month. These profiles show the very real effects the glass ceiling has on people’s lives. We are aiming to create an active community and influence change.

For newsletter http://lasikatto.club/newsletter

For Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lasikatto_club/ 

For Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lasikattoclub/

(ÇT/TK)