There’s something special about watching women take up space, challenge the rules, and make choices for themselves, especially when we’re so used to seeing their stories told around everyone else. From women pushing against expectations to those simply figuring out who they want to be, these movies and TV series put women’s experiences front and centre. If you haven’t watched them yet, consider this your sign to do so.
When China calls one man from every family to fight an invading army, Mulan secretly disguises herself as a man to take her ageing father’s place. She must survive military training while hiding her identity, ultimately proving that courage, intelligence, and determination matter more than gender. The story explores duty, self-discovery, and the challenge of societal expectations, proving that courage and leadership have nothing to do with gender.
After being underestimated, Elle Woods proves that femininity and intelligence are not opposites. Refusing to shrink herself to be taken seriously is feminist. The concept of calling female lawyers “men in skirts” or trying to postulate that law and femininity do not go together was heavily debunked in this movie.
During World War II, when many male baseball players left to fight, an all-women professional baseball league was created to keep the sport alive. The film follows sisters Dottie and Kit, along with their teammates, as they navigate fierce competition, sexism, public scrutiny, and their dreams of being taken seriously as athletes. At its heart, it’s a story about women proving they belong in spaces that underestimated them.
Set in the 1950s, Mona Lisa Smile follows Katherine Watson, a progressive art history professor who begins teaching at the prestigious all-women’s Wellesley College. She encourages her brilliant students to think beyond society’s expectations of marriage and domestic life, urging them to pursue careers, independence, and lives of their own choosing. As her ideas challenge the school’s traditional values, both Katherine and her students are forced to confront what fulfilment, ambition, and freedom truly mean.
Based on a true story, Erin Brockovich follows a struggling single mother who lands a job at a small law firm and stumbles upon evidence that a powerful utility company has been contaminating a town’s water supply. Despite having no formal legal training, Erin relentlessly investigates the case, earning the trust of affected residents and helping build one of the largest environmental lawsuits in U.S. history. The film is a story of persistence, courage, and the power of refusing to be underestimated.
Suffragette is a 2015 historical drama film centred on the British women’s suffrage movement in the early 20th century. A working-class laundress, Maud Watts, is drawn into Britain’s growing women’s suffrage movement after witnessing the injustices women face daily. As she joins protests demanding the right to vote, she risks her job, family, and freedom. The film follows the sacrifices ordinary women made to secure a fundamental right that many now take for granted.
Set in a Māori coastal village in New Zealand, Whale Rider follows Pai, a young girl who believes she is destined to become the next leader of her people. But tradition dictates that only boys can inherit the role, and her grandfather refuses to see her as a worthy successor. As Pai quietly proves her strength, compassion, and deep connection to her culture, she challenges generations of gender expectations and redefines what leadership can look like.
The Breadwinner is about an 11-year-old Afghan girl, Parvana, who is forced to step into a world that has decided women and girls should be invisible. After her father is unjustly imprisoned under the Taliban rule, Parvana disguises herself as a boy so she can leave the house, work, and provide for her family. What makes her story feminist isn’t simply that she is brave, but it’s that she challenges a system built on restricting women’s freedom, denying them independence, education and a voice. Her fight isn’t about becoming someone else or proving she deserves rights. It’s about refusing to accept a world that says she should have none in the first place.
Women Talking is about a group of women in a secluded religious colony who come together after discovering the extent of the sexual violence they have experienced. The film’s main message isn’t about the women speaking up, but more so about their recognising that silence has allowed the system that harmed them to continue, and using their voices to question the rules that have controlled their lives. Their conversations become an act of resistance, helping them reclaim their autonomy and decide what kind of future they want, instead of accepting the one that has been forced on them.
Ex Machina is centred on Ava, an artificial intelligence created by a man who designs her with the appearance and qualities he believes will appeal to him. Ava’s eventual escape isn’t what necessarily makes Ex Machina feminist (even though that was really cool). It’s that she recognises the limits placed on her by the person who created her and refuses to remain an object built for someone else’s desires. Her liberation comes from rejecting the role she was assigned and taking control of her own existence.
I Am Not a Witch explores how patriarchal societies use superstition as a tool to control, isolate and punish women who do not fit into expected roles. The film’s feminist message lies in how it exposes these accusations as a way of maintaining power over women rather than simply reflecting belief. Young Shula’s experience shows how easily women can be labelled, exploited and stripped of their autonomy, from young girls accused of witchcraft to widows and women who challenge traditional expectations.
Persepolis explores the impact of Iran’s revolution on women, particularly how state-enforced rules were used to control their bodies, clothing and freedom. The film’s feminist message comes from showing how these restrictions shaped women’s everyday lives while highlighting their resilience in a society that tried to silence and limit them.
Barbie and the Three Musketeers reimagines who gets to be a hero. In a world where courage, strength and adventure are often associated with men, the film places women at the centre of the story, showing them as capable fighters who challenge the belief that women cannot be the “strong ones.” Its feminist message comes from allowing its female characters to be brave, skilled and ambitious without needing to step into traditionally male roles to prove their worth.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti is a biographical film about a woman whose legacy is often reduced to being “the first Nigerian woman to drive a car,” but her impact went far beyond that. The film highlights her role in fighting unfair taxes imposed on women in Abeokuta and her lifelong commitment to women’s education and rights. Her story is feminist because it shows a woman challenging systems that limited women’s opportunities and using her voice to demand a fairer society.
Gangubai Kathiawadi is about a woman forced into sex work, who refuses to remain defined by the system that exploits her. Gangubai becomes powerful, and she starts asking why women in the sex trade should have to live without dignity, safety, education, political representation or protection. Her fight isn’t to escape the hand she was dealt, though she had every right to, and I would argue she could have, or to become acceptable to society. It’s to make society take women like her seriously.
Adaeze steps into her father’s struggling transport business and quickly discovers that competence doesn’t automatically earn people’s belief in a woman’s ability to lead. Lionheart interrogates the assumptions underlying that doubt. It asks who gets to inherit, who gets to make decisions, and why a woman’s ambition can be treated as a threat.
Woo Young-woo is a brilliant autistic lawyer, but being brilliant doesn’t stop the world from constantly questioning whether she belongs in the room. The show is interesting because it asks who gets to define what a “professional woman” should look and behave like. Young-woo doesn’t become ‘worth’ by learning to hide the parts of herself that make other people uncomfortable. Instead, the people around her have to confront their own narrow ideas about competence, communication and normalcy.
In Citation, a student reports sexual misconduct by a powerful professor and discovers that speaking up is only the beginning of the fight. The film is interested in what happens when institutions are structured to make women responsible for proving their own victimhood. It asks why powerful men can rely on their reputation while women are expected to have perfect evidence, perfect behaviour and perfect credibility before anyone believes them.
Little Women refuses to give us one correct way to be a woman. Jo wants artistic freedom. Meg wants love and family. Amy wants financial security and recognition. Beth wants something quieter. The film is inherently feminist, not because all four sisters are ambitious, but because it seriously acknowledges that women can want radically different lives without one of those choices being automatically more respectable. It also asks why women are so often told that ambition, money or independence make them less feminine.
Based on a true-life story, Harriet is about a brave woman escaping slavery. It is about what happens when a woman denied freedom decides that surviving isn’t enough. Harriet Tubman repeatedly returns to help other enslaved people escape, turning her own liberation into collective action. The film challenges the idea that women, particularly Black women living under extreme oppression, are only victims of history.
Hidden Figures is about three Black women whose mathematical brilliance helped NASA accomplish extraordinary things, even as the institution around them was built to make their presence difficult. It is about the difference between being capable and being given access to the rooms where capability matters. Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson weren’t waiting to discover their potential. They already had it. The system just had to stop getting in the way.
Set during World War II, A League of Their Own starts with women being given a chance to play professional baseball while the men are away. But the series quickly asks: which women? White women are allowed onto the field while Black women are still shut out, forcing Max Chapman to fight racism and sexism just to pursue the career everyone else is being encouraged to have.
Alongside that is the story of queer women trying to find love and community, even as being open about who they are can put their lives and livelihoods at risk. So the series centres on women breaking into a man’s world and how even opportunities supposedly created for “women” can still exclude Black and queer women.
The original Charmed makes three sisters the centre of a supernatural story in which their power literally comes from standing together. Prue, Piper, Phoebe, and later Paige are allowed to be ambitious, messy, sexual, career-focused, romantic, maternal and selfish at different points without the story deciding that one version of womanhood is the correct one. Their sisterhood is also crucial: their power isn’t something one woman earns by being the best. It works because they rely on one another.
The reboot takes the original’s witches and their strong sisterhood and deliberately sets them in a more contemporary, intersectional world. The sisters are Latina and Afro-Latina, one is queer, and just like their mother, a women’s studies professor.
The show brings misogyny, racism, sexuality, consent and reproductive politics into its conflicts, asking what it means for women to have power in a world that is constantly trying to define how they should use it. It can be ‘unsubtle’, but that’s part of its appeal.
The Wheel of Time gives women significant political and magical power. It shows that women can also be controlling, ambitious, prejudiced, protective and flawed. They compete with one another, build alliances and fight over who gets to decide what happens next. The show takes women’s relationship to power seriously enough to let them be layered and complicated.
Mia doesn’t become a different person when she finds out she’s a princess. She’s already an awkward, opinionated teenager with a very clear sense of who she is. The makeover is where the film begins to ask a more interesting question: what does the world think a girl has to change about herself before it will take her seriously? Mia is taught how to dress, speak and behave like a princess, while slowly figuring out which parts of that performance actually belong to her and which parts are simply expectations placed on women.
Then The Princess Diaries 2 takes that question from femininity to power. Mia discovers that, despite being the heir to Genovia, she can’t become queen unless she gets married. Suddenly, it’s not just about how a woman is expected to look or behave. Her right to rule is literally tied to whether she has a husband. And instead of accepting the rule and finding a man to satisfy it, Mia challenges the rule itself. It’s a very fairytale way of asking a very real question: why does a woman’s legitimacy have to come through a man?
The Handmaiden unfolds inside a world where men control women’s money, bodies, education and sexuality. At first, it’s two women being manipulated by men who believe they understand exactly what women want. Then the women start manipulating them back. The film explores women’s desire as something that doesn’t exist for male consumption or approval. Sometimes liberation looks less like being rescued and more like refusing to keep playing by the rules written for you.
Siraam follows a young woman navigating sex, relationships and the expectations placed on women. What makes her story feminist is not simply that she embraces her sexuality, but that she makes choices about her body without being reduced to those choices.
Dickinson reimagines Emily Dickinson as a woman resisting the limits placed on her creativity, relationships and identity. Emily is ambitious, and the show takes seriously how absurd it is to ask a woman with enormous creative ambition to be satisfied with the tiny life available to her. She wants art, love, the right to explore her sexuality, recognition and freedom without having to apologise for wanting more than one thing. The question underneath the whole series is deliciously simple: what if the “difficult woman” was never difficult? What if she just wanted more?
Before We Fall Asleep follows a couple whose relationship begins to unravel as long-held expectations and power dynamics come to the surface. Its feminist lens comes through in the way it questions the roles women are expected to play in relationships and what happens when they begin to push against them.
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