A female empowerment video directed and narrated by actress Claire Chitham will be reshot after criticism over its lack of diversity.

Entitled We Want Women, They Said, the video, which was posted on Instagram last night by Auckland-based production company Flying Fish, seeks to subvert sexist stereotypes by putting words typically spoken by men about women into Chitham's mouth.

"We want women, they said," Chitham recites at the start. "But don't be too strong. Or weak. Lean in! Don't act small, but don't take up too much space."

Her words, written by Kiwi tech founder Jenene Crossan, are overlaid with images of prominent New Zealand women, including Seven Sharp presenter Hilary Barry, actress Jennifer Ward-Leland, businesswoman Iyia Liu and Eat My Lunch founder Lisa King.

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But despite the script's strong message some viewers have taken the filmmakers to task over a lack of diversity among the women featured.

"I love the message... I really do," wrote one. "However, where are our strong powerful, melanin rich girls?? Where are our strong, beautiful women who have bodies that aren't as able as most but still get s... done?"

Supplied Although "bowled over" by positive repsonses to the video, Jenene Crossan said she "could do better."

"Why is New Zealand still producing videos like it's 1955?" one stylist wrote. "Where are the black women and brown women in this campaign?

"While I love seeing my friends and women I admire in here, perhaps this campaign should have been about something else and not feminism. You can't have feminism without including ALL WOMEN."

Crossan said the video was pulled together very quickly in order to coincide with International Women's Day, which was on Sunday.

She was spurred to write the words after experiencing "extraordinary" sexism in London, where she is currently based while she attempts to raise money for her beauty tech software company Powered By Flossie.

"Only a month ago I was put in front of a potential investor whose first question to me was, 'Have you f..... your co-founder?'"

Around the same time Crossan saw Cynthia Nixon's Be A Lady video.

Supplied Iyia Liu appears in We Want Women, They Said

"Inspired by Cynthia Nixon's interpretation of Camille Rainville's poem, I took fingers to keyboard and hashed out my version of Be a Lady, but with fellow female founders in mind," she wrote in a blog post.

Crossan shared her writing with her close friend Chitham, and in one day, Chitham engaged Flying Fish and organised the shoot using friends of those involved.

"Literally at 9 in the morning they said, 'At 7 o'clock we're going to be at Flying Fish studios in Ponsonby, if you can come along please do.'

"I know that they asked lots and lots and lots of people, they went out really wide," Crossan said. "We got what we got in the time frame that we had. And that's where it went."

But she conceded the average person viewing the video wouldn't be aware of the background and the casting could look more deliberate than it was.

Crossan was "blown away" by positive responses to the video, but when she became aware of the criticism, "I completely wore it and said, you're absolutely right. You're right, we can do better. There's always room to do better."

"I don't have the lens that other people have and the only way to have that is to have (enough of) an open enough mind to stand beside yourself and your ego for a moment and go, could I have done better? The irony of course is that's what I'm asking men to do. Of course I'm going to stand in front of you and say we could do better."

To that end, the team behind the video were now planning a reshoot.

"We want all women to feel seen and heard," Crossan said. "Asking for help widening the net and lens. Clearly our own net is too narrow."