Name: Fortune Most Powerful Women Dinner 2022: A conversation with Anita Hill
Uploaded: 2022-05-27
Duration: 16 min 31 s
Description: Anita Hill, Professor of Law, Public Policy, and Women’s Studies, Heller Graduate School of Policy & Management, Brandeis University; Chair, The Hollywood Commission, and Author, Believing will join for a special interview. She’ll discuss her three-decade fight for gender equality and the path forward with us.

Anita Hill, Professor of Law, Public Policy, and Women’s Studies, Heller Graduate School of Policy & Management, Brandeis University; Chair, The Hollywood Commission, and Author, Believing will join for a special interview. She’ll discuss her three-decade fight for gender equality and the path forward with us.

Fortune Most Powerful Women Dinner 2022: A conversation with Anita Hill

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Most Powerful Women Dinner: A conversation with Anita Hill

And now to our feature discussion of the evening realizing your power as you heard earlier, that's our theme for this fall's most powerful women gathering. And there are few women, few people really who better symbolize this theme than tonight's featured speaker, Anita Hill. It's an honor to have Anita back with us to to talk about her three decades Fight for equality and the path forward. Please join me in welcoming to the stage, professor of law, public policy and women's studies at the graduate school of Policy and management at BRANDEIS University Chair, the Hollywood Commission author believing host of her own podcast. Getting even. Uh, please join me in welcoming Anita Hill. Good evening. Thank you. Anita is always such an honor to have you with us. Well, I am just happy to be here speaking with you and seeing all of you. Wonderful empowered women. So let's make some noise alright. Um, because we just heard from Alexis on the potential fall of roe versus wade. Um, you know, you have spent, as I said, more than three decades fighting for gender equality, uh, you just wrote, I think the definitive book on gender based violence from your perspective, what would it mean for the fight for women's equality, Women's safety if we were to lose the constitutionally secured right to abortion. You know, we've already had protection chipped away and that's that's where we are even before this latest uh lead. So, and the violence against women's act has been going on for years now. Um, we haven't done anything really to restore. We hardly even have the same the version that we have now renewed on a regular basis. And what we are talking about when we talk about uh, women's reproductive rights and the right to an abortion really is part of that effort to and for for us to relinquish our right to say what keeps us healthy, what keeps us safe, What allows us to perform in our workplaces in our schools? What allows us to participate in our democracy? So this is really what is at stake and um, and it doesn't just end with a category of women. We are really talking about the Supreme Court ruth Bader Ginsburg herself. He said he was moving away from the principles behind equal protection and civil rights protection that they were interpreting those protections very narrowly. And this is going to continue. It's not going to stop with roe versus wade. It's going to stop with, it's going to continue on a whole slew of equality issues including equal pay that we have been fighting so hard for, but also safety and health issues um, beyond reproductive health. Uh, I also see implications for it when we talk about voting rights. Um, they impact on uh, people of color in particular because already some of the states texas in particular started to um, try to erode some of the Supreme Court's decision that require education for immigrants Children in school where he simply wants to say, I don't want to pay for this to educate immigrant Children anymore, even though the Supreme Court has said that is a violation of their rights. So we are in for, you know, Um a long road and a hard fight, but we also have to remember and this is about claiming your power, then we are over 50% of the population, We are over 50% of the voters in this country. And if we can't take this moment to understand why that is so important and why our participation is important and that what we are doing will benefit all of us. If we move to resist the reduction of rights to re trance and go back to what we didn't have rights. Uh, then I think, you know, if we miss this opportunity, if we don't stand up now, I think we are in for a long road ahead in our own lifetime and perhaps even longer in the lifetime of our daughters. I also want to ask you about another big and weighty topic that I know um, is on people's minds tonight, which is the horrific shooting that happened at school shouldn't happen in texas. Um, one of many mass shootings um, that in our country, um, you know, when these things happen understandably, and I think rightly we think about gun violence. Um, but I'm wondering if you see a connection between our country's problem with gun violence and our country's problem with gender based violence. And and if those are in fact interconnected, well, they absolutely are. And the connections have been drawn, but it's not something that we talked about. Although I noticed even in this case and in the, in the Sandy Hook case before the shooter shot Children, they shot the mothers and grandmothers who were their caretakers. Um, when you and these are things that even the media doesn't really connect. But there's plenty of research out there that shows many of the mass killings. Um, maybe I would say 90% of them have been documented to have been conducted to some form of misogyny. Um, shooters will say they went into on campus and this is one of the shootings in California. They went on a campus and started shooting women because they felt women hadn't been attracted to them or hadn't respected though. Um, many of the very early school shootings involved young men who said that girls weren't interested in them, that they felt inadequate and therefore they took out their anger and aggression in, in school settings, starting with the girls who they thought had been, had mistreated them or disrespected them. And we haven't studied this and I'm not saying that they deserve any uh more or less punishment than these shooters because of the misogyny that has been documented to be behind them. But what I am saying is that we need to understand the role that anti woman thinking has had. Yeah, the act of school violence, mass murder and other kinds of violent behavior that is going on in our schools today and at our colleges and universities in particular. So I don't think that they can be disconnected and there's plenty of research to show that there is a connection. Um we we have to understand that the solution that way have for these problems Can go in two directions, one gun control, which is a conversation that we've been trying to have. But also um the general level of misogyny that is in our society today and how it gets manifested and smaller ways as well as the most egregious ways with uh on the, on the occasion of these mass murders. Um okay, these are heavy topics. Not always your ideal dinner conversation fodder power. So wait here, let's take a moment to celebrate some good news. How about that? Thank you. I think uh many of us felt like partially because of the news cycle uh when justice got Angie Brown Jackson was confirmed um that we didn't necessarily get the time that some of us would have liked to talk about what that means to have a black woman on the Supreme Court for the first time in history. So talk to us about what that means for you. Talk to us about what that means for the country. Well I think it's also another thing that we haven't talked about is in addition to having a the first black woman we have a latin X woman. We have a wise Latina. She likes to think of ourselves, we also have a third woman. And those are going to be the women writing the dissent. And a lot of cases, I am absolutely sure they may be the only people writing dissents. They're all incredibly intelligent and incredibly strategic in their thinking. And how do I know that? Because as we know to be a leader to get to the position that they are in for you to have gotten to where you are, you have to be strategic. Right? So these women are very thoughtful and very powerful. And I think as as bad as the current news is, I think we have to all remember that out of dark times when the Supreme Court makes colossal decisions, there has all there have always been very powerful dissent that inform the law in the future. And you know, I give you, I mean we can we can, you know start thinking about examples I I of course think about Plessy versus Ferguson, but it was the descent that ultimately became the law. And what I see with Catania Brown Jackson and elated Hagen is the the the opportunity for the descent to not only be looking uh strictly at the letter of the law. And as though it's neutral race and gender neutral uh to be looking at it and articulating the law in terms that recognized differences that recognize race and recognize gender in a way that calls for expansion of rights. And that's, you know, that's exciting. I know, you know, it's not the outcome, the immediate outcome that we all would like to see. But you have to take the long view, especially when it comes to the court. You know, you have to take the long view and realize that there still is more work to be done and that the court can change. Uh, in terms of its thinking, I mean, we've seen that and work in the, in the way that we don't want it to. And I think what we have, I've been able to witness in my life. It's a change in the courts thinking on issues that were important to me in the way that I think have been the appropriate and proper way. And that has opened up opportunities for all of us to be here today, where we are. Um, Anita please send everyone back to their dinner with some homework. Like, I think one of the things I admire about you the most is that you have never stopped working to bring women closer to equality. Um, we have a lot of powerful women in this room. Uh, what can we do to help you with that? Well, one of the great things about my time talking about believing is that I have had the privilege really of encountering people who are actually working on issues of equality, who are working to prevent violence as opposed to respond to it once it happens. Um, they're doing it in the workplace. Is I have, you know, I talked to people who um, in in government agencies as well as private practices, who in their organizations have anti violence or violence prevention measures in place. What we have been fighting for lately has been processes in some, you know, complaint processes that are fair and we need those, but we also need to be much more progressive and uh and and forward thinking and thinking, what can we do to stop the violence from even happening? How can we change our culture so that we that workers understand that it is not acceptable? Not that well, it's okay if I get away with it, but that is absolutely not acceptable. And that's one of them. That's been one of the most exciting things that I've learned over the court of my time. Talking about the book, the book that there is violence prevention work that can be done within the workplace. And what I would suggest to you is that you go into your workplace and just say to the people whether it's in HR or diversity and inclusion, what are we doing to prevent violence from happening? What are we doing to prevent microaggressions of so called microaggressions. What are we doing to prevent bullying? We know all of these things are the seeds for worse aggression? Worth violence. And if we can get are our leaders to focus on preventing and we can build organizations that are ready for bystander intervention. Those are two things that I think that will make all of our workplaces safer and that will make them all the fairer. Thank you so much, Always a pleasure.