Regardless of the predominantly male population on campus, Women’s Programs strives to bring powerful, female speakers to campus. To celebrate Women’s History Month, the Women’s Program invited filmmaker, speaker, and gender equality advocate Jennifer Siebel Newsom to campus this past Tuesday.
The Women’s Programs coordinators gave the audience a brief overview of Newsom’s work, which came to include filmmaking, speaking, acting, and activitism. Newsom soon took the podium in DeBaun Auditorium and opened with an anecdote regarding her daughter. When her eldest daughter Montana was born, Newsom said there was “lots of pink” while her son Hunter’s birth included “lots of blue and even a letter from the President,” enticing her newborn son to strive towards the presidency. Newsom commented, “Montana never received the suggestion that she could be the president.”
Newson and her husband, former Mayor of San Francisco and now Lieutenant Governor of California, are familiar faces in the political world, yet is critical that the presidency and political power have come to be a “symbol of masculinity.” The birth of her third child, a daughter named Brooklyn, brought no political paraphernalia either, to which Newsom commented was both “interesting and depressing.”
Her personal story connected to the main focus of her lecture, which was to discuss the gender inequalities that exist in American culture, primarily due to the omnipresent media platforms. Girls are being taught, or influenced to believe that value lies “within youth, beauty, and sexuality.”
Mrs. Newsom wrote, directed, and produced the 2011 Sundance documentary film Miss Representation, which explores how the media’s inaccurate portrayals of women have led to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence. A small clip was played during the lecture, and highlighted the highly-sexualized, degrading media platforms that have come to make girls, as Newsom puts it, “more focused on securing Prince Charming.”
Newsom clarified that she was not speaking to “blame men.” In fact, she elaborated on her newest documentary, The Mask You Live In, which shows how masculinity is portrayed in American culture. Newsom said that “boys are taught that anything matched with masculinity is authority and that they must disconnect the heart from the head.”
Newsom also showed the audience a small preview of The Mask You Live In, which focused on certain aspects of society that encourage aggression, violence, and mental illness in boys and men.
For Newsom, change is necessary. “The status quo is unacceptable. We are complacent if we ignore the impact of the media.”
She also discussed the impact that Hollywood culture has been teaching young men and women about success. She said, “Hollywood is making it seem that if you just make a sex tape, you can be successful.”
Ms. Newsom did not come unprepared. She defended her claims with statistic after statistic, many of which made students shake their heads or bow their heads in disbelief. Statistics have shown that women have 5% of media positions of clout, therefore making 95% of what the population sees, reads, and hears come from a masculine perspective.
Newsom also introduced two institutionalized sexism studies, one conducted at Yale and the other at Harvard. She elaborated on the first study, which indicated that unconscious gender bias hinders career prospects for women in the field of science. The results showed that both male and female professors were less likely to hire a female applicant, and if hired, were more likely to offer a female applicant a lower salary and less mentoring.
Newsom said, “Biases are so institutionalized, they aren’t even conscious. Women’s representation plateaus at only 18% in politics, media, business, religion, and all other career areas.”
How do we fix gender inequality? Newsom believes that we need to break the code of silence. “A major cause of gender inequality is the normalization and acceptance of the status quo. Men are believed to be the breadwinners, the women, the caretakers.”
She suggests that we remedy this cultural science and shame by “challenging toxic norms.” She encouraged the men in the audience to be women’s “most vocal allies.”
Newsom said that the fear of being ostracized has perpetuated everyday injustices. She repeatedly said to the audience, “Silence is your form of consent.”
Despite the staggering statistics that show sexism is alive and ever present, Newsom is optimistic. “Let’s inspire positive action using social media platforms. Imagine what the world would like if men and women created a healthier culture!”
Newsom is the founder and CEO of Girls Club Entertainment, LLC, a film production company established to develop independent films focused primarily on women that educate, activate, and transform culture. She also was the Executive Producer of the 2012 Sundance Award-winning documentary The Invisible War, which exposes the epidemic of rape in the US military. The Mask You Live In, Newsom’s newest documentary, is now available for viewing.
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