On International Women’s Day, Errin moderated a South By Southwest panel with barrier-breaking women. Journalist Katie Couric, actor Brooke Shields, sociologist and DEI consultant Nancy Wang Yuen, and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, have a deep and nuanced conversation about the importance of representation in media, especially for women of color and mothers — and about their hopes for the future.
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About today’s episode
Our moderator
Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of The Amendment newsletter. An award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience, Errin was previously a national writer on race for the Associated Press. She’s also worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Follow Errin on Instagram @emarvelous and X @errinhaines.
Episode transcript
Errin Haines:
Hey y’all! Welcome to the Amendment – a weekly conversation about gender, politics and power from the 19th News and Wonder Media Network. I’m your host, Errin Haines.
A few weeks ago, I flew down to Austin for South By Southwest. While I was there, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel celebrating International Women’s day. The women on this panel were each barrier breakers in their own right – I was joined by the journalist Katie Couric, the actor Brooke Shields, sociologist and DEI consultant Nancy Wang Yuen, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
We talked about the representation of women of color and mothers in media, and the challenges of being a woman in the media industry.
Folks, this was a deep, nuanced conversation, and I wanted to give people the chance to hear it. So without further ado – here is the South by Southwest panel, “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen.”
Hi, everybody. Welcome to South by Southwest. Yes, we are so happy to be kicking this off with you, and I feel so lucky to be here with such incredible and visionary women on International Women’s Day. Yes? Absolutely! This is a day where we celebrate just how far we’ve come, but we also reflect on the work that we still have yet to do. In a lot of our fields, whether that’s media, entertainment or the movies, women’s representation still falls short, particularly for women of color and for mothers. So we’re here today to talk about those gaps and what we are gonna do to fill them. I wanna start with you, Meghan. Yesterday, the Geena Davis Institute [on Gender in Media] and the advocacy organization Moms First released a report that your foundation, Archewell, supported examining the cultural portrayals of motherhood in television. Can you tell us about why this project interested you and what the study found?
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex :
Well, thank you. And firstly, I’m so excited to be here and to be with such incredible women, so much brilliance on this panel, and just an amazing way to celebrate International Women’s Day. So thank you all for coming to listen. As you were saying, the Geena Davis Institute and Moms First released this report, and my husband and I, our foundation, the Archewell Foundation helped to fund it because I think from our standpoint, and certainly from mine, there are three key reasons why it felt vital to see the information they were gonna be pulling through this report. So, on a personal level, I’ve just always loved understanding women and our stories and our lived experiences and our shared experiences. So I was really curious to see what the report was going to uncover in terms of, oftentimes as women, you may agree with this, the way that we see ourselves is reflected back to us sometimes accurately and sometimes much to our disservice inaccurately in what we see in media.
Meghan:
So to be able to have the findings to uncover what we can do to propel that, to make sure women are really feeling seen in a way that is reflective of who and how we are and how we move through the world felt important. From a philanthropic standpoint with our foundation, there’s obviously a lot of work to be done in terms of supporting women and moms. You can begin with paid leave and just really looking at, one of the findings actually said that working moms are paid 62 cents to the dollar for what working dads are. And it’s almost feeling punitive at a certain point when you’re a mom and you’re juggling so much and carrying so much, and you want to be supported in the best way possible. So it’s those reasons. And, you know, we have a production company and as we build out our slate and have projects that we’re doing, or with podcasting as well, to ensure that we are responsibly filling in the roles of moms and women to be reflected in a way that’s accurate. So this report, I think is really valuable and I’m just proud we could support it.
Haines:
Absolutely. I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about that. Nancy, I wanna come down to you because you know better than anyone the damage that inaccurate portrayals have on society. I’m just wondering what your reaction is to this report.
Nancy Wang Yuen:
Yeah, so one of the findings of the moms report is that on television, moms are represented as thin, young, White, and not really working outside of the home, which is a patriarchal fantasy, right? This is not our real lives. And it erases the fact that the U.S., out of all the wealthy countries, is ranked second to last when it comes to child care and parental leave policies. And I remember when I was in grad school – that’s when I had my first baby – and I found it harder to secure affordable and good-quality, high-quality child care than to actually complete my Ph.D. That was how I felt. I mean, if anyone has ever looked for child care, you know, it’s like the hardest thing ever. So in terms of societal, when you have policy makers who are not working moms for the most part, right?
Wang Yuen:
These are the ones that are actually determining policy. And we know that if they’re not actually having contact with folks, they’re deriving their ideas from television, from film. Just subconsciously, you know that’s not real, but that’s what you’re seeing and you’re seeing, “Oh, hey, everything’s great, working moms they’re, you know, they’re just mostly at home and men are the breadwinners.” Meghan mentioned the motherhood penalty, because actually men, when they become fathers, they get a fatherhood bonus because they actually make more money, whereas women are making less. So all this reality is not reflected on television, and that really hurts policy and any kind of societal change.
Haines:
Yeah. So we’re perpetuating negative or wrong stereotypes when we could be perpetuating positive images and representation. So we know that that proper representation is such a critical driver for social change. So Meghan, why is this such an important factor in making the world more equitable?
Meghan:
I’ve said this for so many years and I hope that it starts to land, but I think we can all agree that representation matters in terms of, if you’re a young girl and you see yourself in a position of power or strength or leadership, you can believe that that is possible. If you look out on the screen or you look out in the world and you see no one that looks like you, it is incomprehensible for most people to imagine that they can have that level of success or joy or strength, whatever it may be. And you know, the key thing that I think needs to be focused on in terms of equity is that it’s not a zero sum game. Just because someone else has the same advantage that you do doesn’t mean that you’re losing anything. And it actually creates an environment that is so fair, but also inclusive, where people feel as though they have a seat at the table as they should.
Haines:
Nancy, we have a recent study from the University of Southern California Annenberg that found that of the 100 top grossing movies in 2023 – the year of “Barbie” people – only 30 featured female-identified lead or co-lead actors. That’s a number that hasn’t been that low since the mid 2010s. What’s behind that regressive trend?
Wang Yuen:
So the finding of the USC study is that there are actually less women on screen in the year of “Barbie.” I feel like, are we living in the world of Ken? I mean, reproductive rights are being rolled back. Affirmative action is eliminated in higher ed. We have DEI centers eliminated across different states and corporations, and it feels really bad. And I think it speaks to what Meghan said, this idea that if I have to give up something somehow it’s us versus them. Rather than, I think when women’s rights advance that advances society, when women are working and getting equal share, they’re making money, they’re actually contributing to the economy, right? These are things that are beneficial to everyone. But there’s this really disturbing study that came out of the U.K. that Gen Z boys and men actually are more likely than boomers to believe that feminism does more harm than good. This is really scary, right? These are the young men in our midst. So we really need to be vigilant about making sure that we talk about feminism and women’s rights in a way that is beneficial for everybody rather than this us versus them mentality. So I feel like that’s reflected in the study. That we’re seeing less women because there’s this idea that women are already like taking over, so let’s just put more men out there and that’s not where we want to be.
Haines:
Absolutely. It is not the opportunity Olympics here, people, we are all deserving of opportunity, and there’s opportunity enough for all of us. Brooke, I saw you nodding your head over there. “Pretty Baby,” the documentary about your life came out on Hulu last year. It dissected the early days of your career, which you have alluded to already. For people in the audience who have not seen it yet, can you just paint a picture of what it was like as a 12-year-old girl working in Hollywood in 1978, and really how you feel today looking back on that experience?
Brooke Shields:
First of all, thank you. I was very lucky with the documentary. I’ve been asked to do documentaries for a very long time, and every time I would talk to the creator or the director, they would always end up being like an E! True Hollywood story, or worse, Where Are They Now? Never good for a career. So I pass. But then this very good friend of mine came to me with this idea, and then we spoke to a director, Lana Wilson, who’s a beautiful director. And I said, I gave her all of my archives. I just handed them over to her, and I said, please, the one thing I ask of you is that you make this film about something bigger than me. And she said, well, it’s a doc about you. And I said, I know that, but this is about a much bigger topic.
Shields:
And as we discussed it, we started talking about the sexualization of young women, especially in our country. And I was at the center of it. I was, and I was promoting it, and I was doing it. And I was lucky because I was surrounded by a very strong mom. I never did move to Hollywood. I always went to regular schools. So I had this sort of community around me that was protecting me, buoying me. So I did not become the type of statistic that Hollywood created. Listen, Hollywood is predicated on eating its young, that that’s what it wants to do. It wants to build you up and then devour you. And from a very early age, I learned the importance of education, and I knew that if I went to university, they couldn’t take that away from me. So all of the pitfalls of Hollywood, you know, that’s the way it was being handled in, in the 70s and early 80s.
Shields:
And it’s gotten better a bit, but we still have a long way to go. And one of the things the documentary, I think did, was start the conversation. You know, I’m the subject of it. I didn’t produce it, I didn’t direct it. I had no say. I had to trust, and people don’t really realize that. But just because the documentary is about me, I just had to hope and pray that the women that were handling it – and these were brilliant women – were dealing with the topic and dealing with the subject matter so that we could start conversations with our daughters, with younger women about how it happens, how it’s just at the ready. You are prey, but not to be a victim to it.
Shields:
What I wanted to say, too, is I didn’t want the documentary or anything that I say ever, it’s not from a place of anger. It’s not. It’s more from a place of let’s understand this and let’s harness what we have as women. Now I’m a 58-year-old woman, so I have a different message. Hollywood then was, it’s not that different than it is now, but what I’m noticing is that there are more voices who are surrounded by other women and other supportive voices. And together as a collective, we can move it forward and have it not be angry, but have it be progressive.
Haines:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I love the idea of strength in numbers. And to Meghan’s point, I mean, social media was not a thing that existed then. That’s an added layer to the situation in Hollywood now. Tell me about, you mentioned the conversation that you’re able to have that intergenerational conversation that you’re able to have in reaction to this film. What has some of that been like, how has that been affirming for you?
Shields:
The first conversation shocked the heck outta me. I wanted to say hell, but then I thought I couldn’t. Heck. It shocked the fuck outta me, that’s really what I wanted to say. At the end of the film, the director said, “We need some B roll,” which is just like filming you in an environment and not necessarily having sound, and they play the credits or music or whatever under it. And I was with my two girls, and I have a 17 and a 20-year-old, and the director asked my one daughter, we actually put it to the table. We started talking about, “Would you watch any of your mom’s early films?” And then, “Would you let us do these types of roles now?” And just the fact that I was having those conversations with my young women, girls, and the fact that they felt the ability to express their opinions to their mother without being judged was a huge, huge piece of it.
Shields:
They talked about social media and we often talk about the dangers of social media. But if harnessed properly, it can be a very important perspective that then these young women in our lives can carry forth and have that messaging be a positive one. So to me, just being able to have that conversation at home. And now I’m watching it really sort of filter out into many, many other conversations that I hear on my Instagram or my community at the company I started, Beginning Is Now. And this is a conversation that’s starting to happen, but we’re also needing to have it with the younger generation so that we’re not just standing up for something because we’re complaining about a past, but we’re taking these younger people and we’re sort of shepherding them to have a healthy, inclusive approach to these types of issues.
Haines:
Absolutely. Katie, I wanna come to you because onscreen representation is something that I know you have been cognizant of for your entire career. I know you took steps towards leveling the playing field when you were offered the job of co-anchoring the “Today” show in 1991. Yes. Hello, “Today” show hive. Where are you at? Why was that so important to you?
Katie Couric:
Well, hi everyone. I entered the TV news business in 1979. I am the oldest person on this panel, and I often say it’s when “harass” was two words instead of one. And it was not a particularly hospitable place for women. It was very challenging. At the same time, I think growing up I was acutely aware of the impact media has on the way we see ourselves and our potential and the way we are in the world. And, you know, looking back, I think about the shows, the TV shows, for example, that were around when I was little, it was “Father Knows Best.” Now, I was really little, so I must have watched reruns. But then in the 60s it was “The Donna Reed Show” and “I love Lucy,” very traditional roles for women.
Couric:
And then in 1968, I remember there was a show called “Julia” with Diahann Carroll. She was Black, she was a widow, she was a single mother taking care of her son. And I thought, wow, that’s different. But what was really formative for me was in 1970 when the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” came out because here was a 30-something single woman driving her cool Mustang to Minneapolis and working at a local news station. And suddenly I was 13 and I thought, wow, that’s so cool. I wanna be that person. So when I was offered the job at the “Today” show, I said to Michael Gartner, who was then president of NBC News, I had worked in local news for six years. I had covered the Pentagon, covered Desert Storm and all these other important stories. And I said, I’m interested in this job, but only if you’ll give me a 50-50 division of labor with Bryant Gumbel.
Couric:
I wanna do as many hard news interviews as he does. I don’t wanna be relegated to cooking segments and fashion shows and celebrity interviews. I’ve earned my stripes, and that’s what I’m demanding. I don’t know where I got the chutzpah to do that. It was crazy. I was 34 years old and I was five months pregnant. I just was like, stop. He looked at me kind of quizzically. He had a bow tie, and he said, “What about 49-51?” And I said, “OK, I’ll take it.” And Bryant Gumbel insisted that he open every show, that he throw to every commercial break, that he always threw to the weatherman, who was Willard Scott at the time. And that I could never do that, I think, to convey the idea that he was in charge. But I think just making that demand, eventually I had as much power and took on important jobs on the “Today” show, but from the get go, I said, “This is how I wanna be seen,” because I knew the impact this would have, the dynamics of the show, the division of labor who was doing presidential interviews.
Couric:
I knew little girls were watching that, getting ready for school with their moms. And I wanted them to say, “Look, she is just as good as he is.”
Haines:
Absolutely. Well, I, for one, was definitely watching you both at least 50-50. And you definitely are part of the reason why I’m sitting up here on this stage interviewing you. So let me just say that out loud in front of everybody. Katie, the industry really has changed a lot over the course of your career. In the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, it was still very much a boys club, though. How much progress do you think that we have made?
Couric:
I think we’ve made tremendous progress. I think we have miles to go before we sleep, but you know, you look at The 19th, what you all are doing, it’s amazing. You look at, do you know the presidents of the news divisions of ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and even Fox are all women? That would never have happened. That’s extraordinary. And two of them are women of color. I mean, it’s pretty amazing. But we have a lot of work to do because, unfortunately, this is happening as linear television is declining in its significance. And as these these outlets gravitate towards streaming, I looked at a picture of all the heads of the stream, major streamers, and it’s five White guys. So we have to tackle that, and I hope that will change. But when you look at digital media it’s much worse.
Couric:
I think 20 percent of editors of the most popular international online publications are women. And when it comes to podcasting, women are 50 percent of listeners, but men are 79 percent of hosts of podcasts. So there’s still a lot of inequities that we have to approach, but we’re definitely making progress. And I don’t know about you, but compared to when I was doing network news, I see so many different people from so many different backgrounds. I think, in terms of the on-air talent, I think it would be really wise to get a bigger variety of socioeconomic and life experiences, people who grew up in rural areas, people from the middle of the country. And I think that would even add to the representation we’re seeing now.
Haines:
Absolutely. Really thinking about all the ways we can, we can be factoring diversity in, and especially at the leadership level as well. Brooke, I wanna come back to that Annenberg study I mentioned earlier that found that only three of the 100 top grossing films of 2023 had a lead woman actor who was 45 or older. So I’m wondering, as a 50-year-old woman in Hollywood, as you mentioned, does that track with your experience?
Shields:
Definitely tracks with my experience. I mean, the interesting thing is that I have … we don’t just feel this ageism in Hollywood. You know it at 58 you are too old to be the ingenue, but you’re not quite the granny yet, and they don’t know what to do with you. So if you’re not the sort of the sexy woman at the bar, you’re like, in Depends or dentures. Those are the things you’re offered. Like, literally. And so my reaction towards it again is instead of to just get angry, find and ferret out the filmmakers who appreciate a woman over 40 – I’m 58 – that appreciate the experience, the life experience. We’ve raised the children, we’ve had the families, we’ve had businesses, we’ve had professional lives, we’ve left them, we’ve gone back to them. There’s a versatility and an adaptability and an intelligence and an experience that we have. And I do see that there are people out there that are wanting to cater to programming for those women who just have a place.
Couric:
Look at the “Golden Bachelor.”
Haines:
Hello. And where’s the “Golden Bachelorette?”
Shields :
The “Golden Girls!” Which was interesting. They were like 40 or something.
Couric:
They were the same age as the girls on “Sex and the City” now or “Just Like That,” right?
Meghan:
I think so, yeah. And just how different the perception was at the time. But now I think people are feeling more ageless. But you’re right, there’s still a stigma in terms of the industry on pigeonholing where you can be. As opposed to seeing us as, the depth of knowledge and experiences you’re saying, Brooke, there’s just so much richness that can be given to roles when you have an actor who can bring that level of experience.
Shields:
And even in the beauty industry, you know, again, I’m sitting here feeling slightly guilty as well, because I have perpetuated all these images. You know, my entire career has been sort of built on beauty and that being forefront of all of that. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I want my messaging to be appreciative of having been given the opportunity to make a living out of that. But the importance of beauty as wellness, it’s not vanity, but we’re not just wrinkle cream now either. So there’s a lot of different ways we need to sort of work on not just changing the narrative, but really massaging the narrative to really reflect that there is beauty in this age. There is beauty in all of diversity. There’s beauty in how incredible it is that we’re all so individual and celebrating that.
Couric:
Amen, sister. And get rid of anti-aging. Like the whole expression of anti-aging, whatever.
Shields:
The negative on both words.
Haines:
Both words: wellness preservation. I love that. And also just the idea that we are promoting, the industry reflecting the way that so many of us seem to perceive ourselves, that is not showing up in our media. So I don’t want everybody to think that this Annenberg study is all doom and gloom. Nancy, there is actually something to celebrate in that study. And that is the reality that the percentage of films with people of color in leading roles has increased. Do you think that this indicates a significant long-lasting change? Or are you concerned that as companies are pulling back on DEI programs, for example, this number’s just gonna drop back down.
Wang Yuen:
Yay. Finally we’re seeing people of color actually represented as they are in real life. You know, this is the first. But I think… But. When we disaggregate, we see that, because we know that women are being underrepresented, so it’s actually men of color that are more represented than women of color. So women of color actually went down, and yay for the small independent studios like A24, right? As well as international. We love A24. And those are actually the studios that are driving the more diverse leads. It’s not actually the legacy big studios, and we know that those are the power players. So we need to see them actually start to greenlight and support projects that feature people of color, stories by people of color. We want those really authentic stories. So yes, I think it’s great that we’re finally approaching population parity, but in terms of long-term, we need to see more people jumping in and there’s money to be made and there’s awards to be won. It’s like, why wouldn’t you do it?
Haines:
Yeah. I think that is the case to make. It is not just the right thing to do. It’s also economically and successfully useful to do. Katie, I wanna come back to you and your trailblazing career, because you were also the first woman to solo anchor the “CBS Evening News.” And you were managing editor of that broadcast – I don’t know if everybody knows that – for the five years that you were there. How challenging was that, to be a first, and how did being a woman impact the way that you did that job?
Couric:
How much time do you have? It was really – I’m not gonna lie – it was really challenging. I remember after my first night anchoring the news, it was very exciting. And the next day, one media critic said, “Why was she wearing a white jacket after Labor Day?” And I was like, “It’s winter white.” I splurged on Armani, goddammit. And then it was like, Tom Shales, who really wrote nice things about me, said, “The way she buttoned her jacket, she looked chubby.” Keith Olbermann said, “She looked like she had been botoxed.” A well-known feminist who shall not be named said, “I couldn’t really evaluate her performance because her makeup was so bad.” And I mean, on and on. Somebody else, Dan Rather, who shall be named, said, “I was dumbing down and tarting up the news.” So it was really, really hard.
Couric:
But you know, I’m very glad I did it. It’s funny because I was so upset for a while because I was just getting pummeled left and right in the press. At dinner one night I was with my daughters and I was crying, my 10-year-old daughter Carrie was like, “Mom, what’s wrong?” And I said, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” And she goes, “Mom, remember what Samantha said on ‘Sex in the City’?” And I was like, oh shit, there is so much wrong with that statement from my fifth grader. She said, “If I listened to what every bitch in New York City said about me, I’d never leave the house.” And it was so funny.
Couric:
Just quickly in retrospect, I’m really glad I took the job despite some of those hard days because I think I brought my sensibility as a woman into story selection. We did stories on sexual assault in the military, on dating violence after Yeardley Love was beaten to death by her boyfriend at UVA, a lacrosse player. We did stories on a woman who was raped by three basketball players, and they were never held accountable at her university. I did stories in Afghanistan where I sat in a room with Afghan girls who were in a safe place where a man could never have gone. So I feel like I really contributed to what was on the show. And I also kept sexism from permeating into the broadcast. I remember I said to one of the three male news writers – Jerry, who I love – had described Hillary Clinton in a way. And I said, “Jerry, would you describe a male candidate for president that way?” So I was a bit of a watchdog to make sure that women’s stories were told and the internal politics of… don’t get me started, read my book, “Going There.” It’s a memoir and it’s in paperback now, if you really want the juicy scoop on how the people at CBS treated me, they were awful. Sorry.
Haines:
I’m not sorry. I’m ready to read this book. Meghan, I wanna come back to you because social media has really become the go-to place for girls and women to be scrutinized, objectified, bullied. And unfortunately, I know that this is something that you are all too familiar with. So how have you been able to manage the seemingly endless toxicity that comes at you?
Meghan:
It’s really interesting. As I can reflect on it, I keep my distance from it right now just for my own wellbeing. But the bulk of the bullying and abuse that I was experiencing in social media and online was when I was pregnant, with Archie, and with Lili, and with a newborn with each of them. And you just think about that and really wrap your head around why people would be so hateful. It’s not catty, it’s cruel. Why you would do that. And certainly when you’re pregnant or you have a newborn, we all, as moms know, it’s such a tender and sacred time. And I think you could either succumb to it or nearly succumb to how painful that is. And maybe in some regards, because I was pregnant, that mammalian instinct just kicked in. Do everything you can to protect your child and as a result, protect yourself too.
Meghan:
I think as we look at what’s happening in social media, there is so much work to be done in terms of keeping people safe. And that starts as we see what’s happening with children and their exposure to things. But also just creating these habits that what I find the most disturbing, frankly, especially as a supporter of women, is how much of the hate is women completely spewing that to other women. And I cannot make sense of that because I understand that there are certain platforms. Look, today’s a really good example. This is being streamed on one of those platforms. And it’s also fantastic because people are gonna have access to hear all of this brilliance and all of this insight. And at the same time, it’s a platform that has quite a bit of hate and rhetoric and incentivizes people to create pages where they can churn out very, very inciting comments and conspiracy theories that can have a tremendously negative effect on someone’s mental health, their physical safety.
Meghan:
So I think we have to really take a look at that. And we’re talking about how many women are in leadership positions, as you’re saying in broadcast. There are a lot of women that are at the highest level, executive level, who are great champions of women, who are great philanthropists, and they are working in these spaces, and yet they’re allowing this kind of behavior to run rampant. And at a certain point, they have got to put the dos behind the says and really make some changes on a systemic level. And then, on the flip side of that, we have a responsibility in all of that. The systemic change has to happen at the same time as the cultural change is happening. Because if you’re reading something terrible, terrible about a woman, why are you sharing it with your friends? Why are you choosing to put that out in the world? What if it was your friend or your mom or your daughter? You wouldn’t do it. And I think that is the piece that is so lost right now in what’s happening in the digital space and in certain sectors of the media, we have forgotten about our humanity. And that has got to change because I understand there’s a bottom line, and I understand that a lot of money is being made there, but even if it’s making dollars, it doesn’t make sense.
Shields:
Can I just add one one thing to that? Because what you said is also very important. It’s so impossible. Social media was not around when all the vitriol was being hurled at me and my mother and everything. And, and it was unbelievable. Now, I never read any of it. Had there been social media, it might have just disintegrated me. I don’t know. The whole idea of social media in your household with your young, in my case, women, my daughters were the ones to tell me, “Mom, don’t read the comments.” And I found that really interesting. Not only was I learning from these young women who I’ve spent their entire lives telling them what to do and how to feel and how to think and everything, they were coming back to me. You know, that’s interesting.
Shields:
I said, “Why?” They both said, “Because there’s such anger and negativity and vitriol out there.” I hope they used the word “vitriol” because then I’d be really proud of them. It might have been other words, but the fact that in addition to what you’re saying is we’ve gotta make sure that we look right behind us too and bring up these young women who want to cancel out that messaging and only go towards a positive. Because there’s no function in the negativity. And, and every single little one of those conversations has to … I was with Gloria Steinem one day, ’cause that’s what I do.
Shields:
I just hang out with Gloria. Um, no, I was in a group of women, and it was a talk that we all had and women were starting to talk about, but how do you make a change? How do you make the difference? How do we move it forward? And she said, “Don’t kid yourself. Every major, major movement started in a room like this with six people.” And it’s those little gems of those ideas. It’s the small incremental changes that we have to be vigilant on continuing to do it. So it’s having those conversations with your young children and with your soon-to-be-a-mom daughter and really starting on that ul granular level to have the voices be heard more loudly.
Haines:
Yeah. All of us being part of that intervention to create the change that we know needs to happen. Meghan, last year the U.S. Surgeon General even weighed in on this, issuing a warning that social media use is a main contributor to depression and anxiety in teenagers. The Archewell Foundation seems to be doing so much work at the forefront of the online world. So you are somebody that is also walking the walk here, especially for young people. Can you talk about what you’ve learned and where you think we need to go as a society to better support parents, especially mothers?
Meghan:
I really think it can piggyback on what Brooke was saying as well. With Archewell Foundation, we work with the Social Media Victims Law Center, which is very important and heartbreaking work. It’s parents whose children have taken their lives because of what was happening to them in the online space. And the level of online harms that are there when you have these beautiful, vibrant children that are either being so aggressively bullied online or frankly these young girls who are going online and they’re drowning in this world of comparison that suddenly their sense of self has become so small that they don’t see a value in being alive. So we’ve worked really actively with these parents to be there with them in their grief, but also in the interest of affecting change.
Meghan:
I think as we’re talking about all this, and yes, this is very heavy and it’s weighted, but it’s also really real. There is a lot of good that’s being done at the same time by, there’s a group called the Youth Power Fund. I was just talking to them before I came out here. They are working so hard as young people who are in it saying, “This isn’t making sense for us. We are not just a number or a statistic, and our lives matter. Our sense of self and our sense of purpose matters.” There’s a lot of action that’s happening. To your point earlier as well, working as a collective. I mean, you mentioned Gloria. Gloria Steinem is one of the people that will say any sort of work that you’re doing that is in the direction of good, you’ve gotta make it fun. So even though all this is weighted, she loves working on a campaign.
Meghan:
She loves what happens when you come together and you go, you know what, inch by inch we’re getting closer to seeing a much better place and certainly a better online world. And I think we all just have a responsibility there to weigh in as moms. It is a really, especially as I was saying earlier, when you’re a new mom, it is a really vulnerable time. And the effect that social media can have on new mothers, I mean, even just the lack of sleep because they spend all this time scrolling and scrolling. But it can also be really dizzying for them to see this portrayal of motherhood that looks so perfect when we all know it’s not perfect. We all know that it’s messy. I’m fortunate in that, amongst the privileges that I have in my life, I have an incredible partner. My husband is such a hands-on dad and such a supporter of me and our family, and that I don’t take for granted. That is a real blessing. But a lot of people don’t have that same level of support. So I think for us, it’s just trying to put the safeguards in so that women, and moms especially, cannot feel like they’re even more vulnerable when they go online, that they can somehow feel like they’re going to a safer place.
Couric:
And Errin, I sense in the zeitgeist a real uprising of people who are saying enough, you know, these tech companies really aren’t going to do much. I was on the co-chair of the Aspen Commission on Disinformation with some other people, and you know, it’s clear that their bottom line is much more important than the mental health of American kids. And Jonathan Haidt just wrote an amazing book called “The Anxious Generation,” I think it comes out in a couple of weeks, and I highly recommend it. But he talks about the statistics and what is happening to teenage girls in this country, and traces it back to the advent of the smartphone in 2010. And the changes we’ve seen societally as a result of a smartphone, particularly for teenage girls, is so upsetting, disturbing and disheartening. And basically their business model is keeping people on the platform, especially Instagram and Facebook, because those are the platforms teenage girls are gravitating to so they can get as much data as possible so they can charge their advertisers certain rates.
Couric:
And then ergo affecting the mental health causing depression, particularly among teenage girls. So it’s this vicious, not a virtual cycle. It’s a vicious cycle. And I actually brought some stats because I just was looking at this book and I thought, I’m just gonna mention a couple of them because I think they’re so relevant. The impact of social media on girls’ mental health is equivalent to binge drinking. Researchers in France found that girls who look at images of thin women, even for 20 milliseconds, become more anxious about their own appearance. Emergency room visits by girls for self harm have increased 188 percent since 2010. There’s been a 167 percent increase in suicide rates for young girls since 2010. In 2010, the percentage of teenage girls when asked how satisfied they were with themselves was about 70 percent. It is now declined to 55 percent. So we have a real crisis on our hands here.
Haines:
Absolutely. And it should be framed as exactly that. The numbers that you just laid out, Katie, should be alarming to everyone, whether you are a mom, whether this is somebody that you know. They should be alarming to us as a society. Nancy, I want to come to you because there was another recent study from The Economist that found that 38 percent of women have had personal experiences of online violence. And 85 percent of women who spend time online have witnessed digital violence against other women from defamation, hate speech to stalking, you name it. What is the best way to combat or eradicate this kind of harassment?
Wang Yuen:
I joked if I had the answer, it would be so simple. But I think everything that everyone mentioned in terms of, I think Meghan mentioned systemic, and Katie mentioned just the knowledge. I think we all need to acknowledge that this is a problem. This is a mental health problem. This is a public health problem. I think that me, personally, as a woman of color who talks about racism, sexism, it’s like, hello, just paint a target on my head. I’ve gotten so much social media hate and also social media hate that then transfers into your real life. So I had, I actually quit my last job. I was a professor for 14 years, and I quit because my institution was just not supporting me and supporting the fact that I was attacked.
Wang Yuen:
I had a troll email the president and try to get me fired, right? And instead of just kind of nipping it right there, they actually wanted me to answer this troll. And the troll was just saying, I tweeted too much about Asians. That was the critique. I was like, wow, this is just the level. They don’t understand the kind of critique that we’re under. It’s not just the platforms themselves need to do better moderation, but institutions. Academics are actually being attacked all over. There are watch lists for professors. Sociology is getting eliminated as a discipline. It’s this constant attack of anything that reeks of progress. And I think women and women of color who are speaking up often bear the big brunt of it. And so we need all institutions, we need people to listen. When you hear someone that is working under you, if you are a manager, if you’re a president, if you’re in any position of power, listen to those who are experiencing this and believe them and make changes and support them.
Haines:
Amen to that. Katie, you mentioned that book from Jonathan Haidt. So as we mentioned, you started your own media company six years ago. You’re using social media platforms to talk directly to your audience. How are you using those platforms responsibly as a force for good?
Couric:
Well, you know, I think I realized, Errin, pretty early on that people were consuming news and information in a very different way. That’s why I went to Yahoo and became the global news anchor. My husband made fun. He said, “Why don’t they call you the intergalactic news anchor?” But I knew that digital platforms were going to be the platforms of the future. And so I started Katie Couric Media. I didn’t wanna name it that, but everyone said, because my name is known, I should name it that because people were familiar with my name. And it’s been really great. We have about 40 employees. We have a daily newsletter. I have a podcast. We do interviews. Like, I’ll do an IG live with Michael McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia. Or I did Kamala Harris for my podcast because I think these people trust that I’m a professional journalist, and so they feel comfortable with me and know that I’m gonna be prepared and hopefully know what I’m talking about.
Couric:
So that’s been really great. And when you look at the numbers, if I put it on my YouTube, I spread it across different social media platforms. And if you aggregate the numbers, they’re just as high as many network interviews are these days because of the decline of linear television. So it’s been a really wonderful experience. And I work with my husband, who’s the CEO of the company because he has a strong business background. I’m the boss of me. I get to determine what stories are important, and we’ve got an incredible team of people, and it’s just a thoroughly modern media company and a thoroughly modern approach to getting to people where they are on a whole panoply of platforms. And it’s been really exciting and given me a level of independence and not having to work for the man who says, “She’s too old. We really don’t want her anymore,” like they did to Jane Pauley when she was like 42 on the “Today” show. It was absurd. So I wanna take control of my own fate and destiny, and then be able to mentor young journalists and hopefully help them along as well. And that’s been a real thrill for me too.
Haines:
Absolutely. And you are certainly creating that blueprint for a lot of us to follow in this rapidly changing, kind of digital unknown landscape of where do we go from here in media and in journalism. Everybody up here is really so invested in creating community, fostering community, supporting community. Meghan, so much of your work with the Archewell Foundation is centered around uplifting community. What is it about community building that you feel is so vital, especially to the success of women today? And how is community part of that solution?
Meghan:
I think that at the end of the day, I was talking about it a bit earlier, women especially, well all people, you wanna feel seen and you want to feel heard. And community is a huge, vital piece of that because when you’re part of a collective and you feel as though someone is seeing you, really seeing you, really listening to what you have to say, at a certain point, you feel empowered when you don’t feel alone. Any sort of fight or struggle, any experience really, you want to have someone that you can share it with. And so I think the community building piece of that is key. And as we were touching on earlier, because there is so much work to be done that is not a one-man or one-woman job. And so the collective of all of us working together, understanding the shared goal that is in the interest, best interest of our shared humanity is just key. You can’t do it by yourself, and I don’t think you want to.
Haines:
I think that’s true. Brooke, your community, Beginning Is Now, which is bringing together women over 40. I wanna hear more about that. What is it that you are trying to accomplish?
Shields:
I started Beginning Is Now, it was almost like my version of a blog during COVID because I wanted to hear from women over 40 and what they were feeling they needed and how they were feeling they were represented, how they were being marketed to. I was feeling a sense of empowerment being at this age and almost an empty nester, and feeling like my life is really just beginning in a very different, vibrant way. And I started this community, and the community grew very, very quickly, and I listened to them. And for me, the beginning is right now, and that’s what I started. But this community amassed rather, rather quickly. And what women were saying was that they felt overlooked and they felt devalued. And so to me, my goal was always to start with and maintain that community.
Shields:
Because when you get a bunch of women all together, when you listen to them supporting one another and being galvanized by the belief that life isn’t over at a certain age, there’s a lot of energy and power in that. And I want really to help be a conduit to change the narrative on aging and to be a leader in innovative products that actually women need. For their different needs that they have that change as we hit menopause, but we’re not just menopause. And the real goal is to keep growing and amassing this community because the power in it. And when you listen to women and when they feel heard, it becomes a movement. And I started out, and it’s been miraculous as to how personally gratifying it is to listen and really listen, take the message and want to do whatever I can to amass whatever experts I can to help forward that mission of women feeling like they can live with vitality and live fearlessly and joyfully and honestly, and that they matter still.
Couric:
I think one of the big issues … Yay to that. I think one of the big issues, we’re seeing a transition to new business models because the old business models are declining, but the new business models aren’t really enough to support the kind of work we wanna do, the content creation, digital news, et cetera. And at our company, we found a way to work with purpose-driven brands. Brands increasingly are taking on big societal issues from gender equality to racial justice, to environmental sustainability, to health and wellness and cancer screening. So we have figured out a financial foundation for our company where we partner and do storytelling with things that they care about, things their employees can care about, things that consumers care about. And that way we are able to sustain our payroll. And not only, while other media companies are shrinking, we’re actually growing with this model. So I think you’re gonna see more people doing things like that because otherwise, it’s just simply not sustainable from an economic model.
Haines:
Yeah. And by the way, focusing on half the population, the math for that seems to be kind of obvious and something for more people to think about going forward. So we’re coming to a close here, but I wanna just throw out one last question for all of you to answer, because as we’ve heard today, it’s not all doom and gloom. And so I would really just love to know across your fields who you see doing representation really well, who you see rewriting the rules, who you see changing the game, whether that’s filmmakers or showrunners or media executives who have pushed the envelope. Who is that person? Who is that for each one of you? Nancy, we’ll start with you and come on down the line.
Couric:
Can we name more than one?
Wang Yuen:
I feel like supporting people like Ava DuVernay is doing amazing work. I mentioned A24 I feel like A24 is like a model I think for everybody to follow in terms of, you can look at “Moonlight,” “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” When you have authentic storytellers from those communities telling stories about, by and for. They’re not necessarily thinking, I wanna just reach the Marvel-wide four quadrant audience, but we’re really telling a story that is based on my own life experience and that resonates. They’re like, we’re not that different from each other, even though diversity is wonderful, but we actually resonate when we see someone’s truth. It resonates with something true in ourselves, even if we don’t understand that completely. And we wanna know more. We need to learn more about one another and develop empathy. And that kind of storytelling is what I like to see. And I hope that studios like A24 and the big legacy studios can also start to follow suit.
Shields:
There are the obvious ones. There’s Shonda Rhimes and there is Viola Davis and you’ve got Greta Gerwig, and that’s very current and young, but I also believe that it is in storytelling. And there’s a network executive, her name is Christina Rogers, and I’ve done two films with her, and her main idea and focus is storytelling for women over 40. And that was a very unpopular idea when she brought it up and she fought for it. It’s not that I just wanna only talk about myself, but what is very important is that we look at the big ways people can change and the big platforms that they use. But then the little ones, the smaller executive that is fighting for a storyline that does involve showing all of these different, the diversity of women across the board. And so I think it’s also in the small little brush strokes that I feel change is making is, is happening and growing.
Couric:
As I get more into documentaries – I’ve done a number of them – but also even scripted projects. I am very grateful, as Brooke mentioned, to people like Viola Davis who has her own production company, Reese Witherspoon, you wouldn’t believe how many female-run production companies have popped up. Now the question is, will the people who make the decision as streamers see the value of these shows that focus on women or focus on older women? Because people who watch these things, they do wanna see, as Nancy said earlier, themselves reflected in the content that they’re consuming. So I think there’s a lot going on there. And then there are people like Kara Swisher, who has really made a name for herself covering tech, but now so much more. Abby Phillip, I’m a big fan of at CNN. Jessica Valenti. I get her newsletter, it’s all about abortion, and she keeps me up to date on reproductive rights. So I think people are finding their passion projects and then they are disseminating their content to people who really want it and find it valuable. So I think there are a lot of exciting developments and sort of across the industry that we can be proud of.
Meghan:
It actually connects perfectly to what you’re saying, because to the point of having so many fantastic female creators and founders of production companies that are making such good work. I think Bela Bajaria is such a great example. She’s at Netflix at the executive level of bringing in the content that reflects our stories in a holistic and real way. She’s a woman, she’s a woman of color. And that speaks to our earlier question about representation. She’s in that role and in that role, in a position of power, you are able to then share that more broadly so we can all feel more seen. Then on the flip side of a different sector, not entertainment related, but since we’ve talked about Gloria Steinem a few times, I think she’s such a fantastic example of why we all have to keep going. She’s turning 90 next month, or this month, and you look at Glo and at 90 she still knows there’s work to be done and she’s not throwing in the towel. And I think there’s something so beautiful about that, to go whether you’re a 9-year-old girl or a 90-year-old woman, you can absolutely continue to make the change that we all need. And I think it’s a great, great reminder for all of us.
Haines:
Agreed. Well listen, I cannot think of a better note to end on. I cannot think of a better way to spend International Women’s Day. Thank you all so much for your representation. Thank you so much for breaking barriers in the way that each of you have, and will continue to do.
