Meghan joins feminist icon for campaign video
Duchess of Sussex tells Gloria Steinem she is ‘glad to be home’ as they call on women to use their vote
One is the doyenne of American feminists, blazing a trail in the Sixties and still idolised by a new generation. The other, an outspoken Duchess who recently fled the British Royal family in favour of using her “voice”.
Gloria Steinem and the Duchess of Sussex teamed up yesterday to convince young women to use their vote, as Meghan disclosed she was glad to be home in California “for so many reasons”.
The 86-year-old activist presented the Duchess with a bracelet with the motto “Linked not ranked”, understood to be a statement of equality.
The Duchess told her: “It means everything to me on every level.”
The pair went on to discuss racism, the internet and Prince Harry’s feminist credentials, as well as the Duchess’s deep concern about American “voter suppression”.
In the latest in a series of events about voting in the lead-up to the US presidential election on Nov 3, the Duchess disclosed she has been in touch with a leading Democrat politician. She also made her most outspoken criticism yet of her country’s system, in comments that will be closely scrutinised for their political involvement.
“I’ve been really concerned about voter suppression,” she said, in the event for feminist platform Makers.
“We can already see all the different challenges that we’re facing. I had the chance to speak with Stacey Abrams about this to try to get a better understanding of what to do, for example, if you’re a person of colour and you’re in line, for potentially hours on end, and during that time someone tries to intimidate you to tell you that you should get out of line because you might be under surveillance or any number of intimidation tactics that are so scary.
“Then you think: ‘You know, it’s not worth it.’ You decide to step out of line and relinquish your right to vote. That’s bad enough, but then there’s a ripple effect because whoever is in the back of the line says, ‘Whatever they did to them… I don’t want that to happen to me.’
“That, I think, is so frightening. But I wonder how we circumvent that and how we get people to feel empowered.”
She also tackled the subject of racism on the internet, claiming “the digital space really shapes our thinking about race”.
Claiming search results about white women and black women produce different suggestions – “pretty” or “beautiful” for the former, and “angry” or “loud” for the latter – she said: “You get to see how our minds are being shaped by something so much bigger than what we’re actually feeling or putting out there.”
As Ms Steinem spoke of how “women of colour” had shaped recent elections with “conscience and compassion”, the Duchess added she was “so excited” to see Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential nomination.
It was the latest public discussion hosted by the Duchess, who has recently undertaken several online events aimed at convincing her fellow American citizens to vote. In one, she spoke of voter suppression and urged fans to vote for “change”, in comments widely interpreted as supporting the Democratic cause. Yesterday, she appeared with Ms Steinem in a black and white film, outside what fans assumed was her new Montecito home with her pet dogs – Guy and Pula – at her feet. “I’m so glad you’re home,” Ms Steinem told her.
“Me, too, for so many reasons,” said the Duchess,
The pair, now friends, also praised Prince Harry for proving people can be both masculine and a feminist.
“Like my husband!” said Meghan. “I love that when he just came in he said: ‘You know that I’m a feminist too, right Gloria?! It’s really important to me that you know that.’ “And I look at our son and what a beautiful example that he gets to grow up with a father who is so comfortable owning that as part of his own self-identification.”
‘You know that I’m a feminist too, right Gloria?’