I Watched Dolly Parton's 9 To 5 And It's Still Relevant For Women Today

More than 45 years later, the progressive workplace Judy, Violet and Doralee created is still a utopia, not a reality.

Senior Reporter, Work/Life

On the set of her 1980 film debut “9 To 5,” Dolly Parton wrote a working-class anthem that called out how workers don’t get compensated and recognized fairly for their contributions: “It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it / And you spend your life puttin’ money in his wallet.” Before Parton even begins to sing, we hear the clacking of a typewriter, a familiar drumbeat to office work.

This story was originally published on November 4, 2019.The title track “9 to 5” is still used as an anthem for people waking up with their “cup of ambition.”

But does the film itself hold up? “9 to 5” starred Jane Fonda (Judy), Lily Tomlin (Violet) and Parton (Doralee) as three working women in New York City who have had enough of being disrespected and underpaid by their “sexist egotistical lying hypocritical bigot” boss, played by Dabney Coleman.

They team up to take him down, and in the process become the unseen architects of a happier, more productive workplace.

Copy machines have improved a little since Judy battled a difficult Xerox, but too many of us are pressured to work longer than eight scheduled hours a day, and the film still makes radical claims about what a workplace should look like. “9 to 5” is often labeled as a farce and a revenge fantasy, but it uses those laughs to talk about a harder topic: the rage of not seeing your hard work recognized.

Fonda developed the film with her production company, and said she was inspired by the real frustrations expressed by working women who were members of the 9to5 office workers’ advocacy organization. She wanted to use humor strategically to tell their stories. As she told an Australian newspaper in 1981, “At first we were going to make a drama. But any way we did it, it seemed too preachy... It remains a labor film.” I had never watched “9 to 5” until recently, but I found the arguments Violet, Judy and Doralee........

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