Inspiring ChangeMAKER: Anita Hill

Anita Hill has been an Inspiring ChangeMAKER for decades. MAKERS sits down with her to explore what happened with Hill 30 years ago and why the same issues still face women in the workplace today. We discuss how division, shame, denial and chaos in a work environment harms women and how it continues to perpetuate the gender gap, not just in pay inequities but socially and emotionally.

Video Transcript

I think of myself in many ways, a teacher, I think of myself as an advocate.

I think we are powerful because we know ourselves.

Uh we are powerful because we are willing to take risks to further ourselves and to help other people that makes us powerful.

And I also think we are powerful because uh even in darkest times, we can find joy and we can try to spread that joy to people and let people know that the reason to move forward uh is that there can be joy on the other side of pain makers is really the thing that keeps us all together, the foundation, the, the things that allows us to have hope and to believe that the future will be better than the past I believe then as now that having a social relationship with a person who was supervising my work would be ill advised.

I was very uncomfortable with the idea and told him.

So you have stated that the 1991 hearing was a rejection of you and your lived experience.

Where are we today with public persecutions of women that come forward about gender violence, harassment and misconduct.

You know, from my observation, I think we have come a long way when that happens, people are called out for it.

But I think the behavior of course, still happens in many cases.

Unfortunately, how much abuse is heaped on someone who comes forward has to do with how powerful the person who is committing the abuses is.

So that if the person that you're complaining about is a very powerful individual, people are more likely to accept uh denigration of, of you who you are and what you have to say.

Um And that's, you know, something that we need to understand and that what we are doing typically is siding with the most powerful and creating something much worse for the more vulnerable people.

Um That's a thing I think that is still hanging over us and is uh unfortunately, keeping some people from ever speaking up.

The university community is the most integrated community that they will ever be in.

And the more that we teach young people how to respect each other, to respect others ideas, to get along and to work together, I think the better we will come or the closer we come to gender equity, that's where the practice can begin to happen or that sets in uh pays for the rest of the lives and their careers, especially one of the things that we did focus on and, and our shift in makers is expanding beyond the corporate world and focusing on workplace because this happens everywhere we know this and workplaces look very different.

You know, it begins with Children and that's ideas that they're getting about respect, especially around gender and what they think are the appropriate behaviors based on gender.

I think we're changing.

I do think that pa parents and teachers are becoming more active and more engaged in this and they're starting to see this in a way that uh is different from what maybe they were told when they were growing up.

We're, I think at a point where we are now really ready to push these things into place and get them operationalized.

And that's when we can, I see that change really is possible.

Just a little bit of change is often so encouraging to people that if you see a little bit, then you, you want more and that's where we want people to be.