No, the film very pointedly doesn't return them to their previous subjugated status. It leaves them in a new position where they are treated slightly better and the potential for them to gain greater equality in the future is mooted. In other words at the beginning of their own suffrage process.
At which point you could correctly point out that even with that supposed improvement they still don't have anything like full equality, they didn't get access to powerful positions and that for all that they might notionally be less subjugated than before they are effectively still lesser citizens, all of which is unfair. And the film/filmmakers would respond "yes, exactly".
Because they're using the Kens' position in Barbie's world as a mirror of the unfairness women have experienced and continued to experience in the real world as part of their suffrage movement. While they (eventually) got women on the Supreme Court in real life it did not happen immediately, it took all the time the film implies it will also take for the Kens. And even now there are countless other markers of equality that women have yet to achieve.
Which is why the distinction between the Kens' old and new position matters, and also why them being given full equality wouldn't make any sense. Because if the film did either of those things it would no longer be mirroring real-world suffrage, where women were neither kept under the exact same level of subjugation nor immediately granted equality. For both women and the Kens it was a case of (as the narrator says) needing to start somewhere.
To somehow perceive that comment on the slow, frustrating process of working towards equality as being a misandrist point on the film's part is very odd.
At which point you could correctly point out that even with that supposed improvement they still don't have anything like full equality, they didn't get access to powerful positions and that for all that they might notionally be less subjugated than before they are effectively still lesser citizens, all of which is unfair. And the film/filmmakers would respond "yes, exactly".
Because they're using the Kens' position in Barbie's world as a mirror of the unfairness women have experienced and continued to experience in the real world as part of their suffrage movement. While they (eventually) got women on the Supreme Court in real life it did not happen immediately, it took all the time the film implies it will also take for the Kens. And even now there are countless other markers of equality that women have yet to achieve.
Which is why the distinction between the Kens' old and new position matters, and also why them being given full equality wouldn't make any sense. Because if the film did either of those things it would no longer be mirroring real-world suffrage, where women were neither kept under the exact same level of subjugation nor immediately granted equality. For both women and the Kens it was a case of (as the narrator says) needing to start somewhere.
To somehow perceive that comment on the slow, frustrating process of working towards equality as being a misandrist point on the film's part is very odd.
️