Meghan: Boy or girl, my baby will be raised to be a feminist
MEGHAN Markle vowed yesterday her baby will be a feminist ‘whether it be a boy or a girl’.
In an extraordinary public performance, she even joked that she already felt ‘the embryonic kicking of feminism’ in her womb.
The 37-year-old also spoke openly about her passion for activism and revealed that Prince Harry had already benefited from ‘gender stereotype shifting’ and classed himself as a feminist as well.
Wearing a €215 Reiss dress and €1,442 Alexander McQueen blazer, Ms Markle was part of a panel discussion convened by Queen Elizabeth’s Commonwealth Trust – of which she was named vicepresident to mark International Women’s Day.
The event brought together a special panel of female ‘thought-leaders’ – including singer Annie Lennox – to discuss a range of issues affecting women.
Meghan, who has long trumpeted her feminist credentials, was described by the panel’s host as ‘a royal not afraid to embrace full-on feminism’.
Asked how her pregnancy was going, she said: ‘Very well. It’s funny, I’d actually been joking these past few weeks I’d seen this documentary on Netflix about feminism and one of the things they said during pregnancy was “I feel the embryonic kicking of feminism”, I loved that.
‘So boy or girl, whatever it is, we hope that that’s the case, our little bump.’
It is thought she was referring to Johanna Demetrakas’s film Feminists – What Were They Thinking?
Asked whether feminism could be a subject for men, too, Ms Markle said that it was important for ‘men to understand they can be feminists as well’ and that they shouldn’t be ‘threatened’ by having a ‘woman by your side, not behind you’.
On the subject of how she had began to identify as a feminist, Meghan repeated the now-famous story about how she wrote a letter of complaint about a ‘sexist’ TV advert for washing up liquid at the age of 11. The advert was subsequently reworked by its creators.
‘I was able to change this commercial,’ Meghan said yesterday. ‘It really set up the trajectory for me to say, if there is an inequality, then someone needs to do something. And why not me?’
As an adult, Meghan said, she quickly realised that education for girls was key to changing communities in developing countries, as it has a ‘ripple effect’ on so many things.
‘It really does solve so many of the world’s problems when girls have access to education,’ she said.
She said her new role as vice-president of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust would enable her to spread her message across the globe.
‘It is about global feminism, it is about a parity and equality for all of us,’ she said.
Discussing the public reaction to her feminism and the fact that it has sometimes been criticised as being overly earnest, Meghan insisted she didn’t read pieces about herself or look at social media. ‘Much safer that way,’ she claimed.
And she exhorted people to do something rather than just post messages on social media. ‘Hashtags are not enough,’ she said, urging her listeners to make a donation or ‘sponsor a girl’ because ‘that is how we start to effect that change’.
‘It’s about parity for all of us’