Michelle Williams Has a Long History of Standing Up for Women’s Rights
Emma Specter
When Michelle Williams accepted her Golden Globe Award on Sunday night, for playing Gwen Verdon in FX’s Fosse/Verdon, she said so much more than a simple thank you. Williams, who is pregnant and has a 14-year-old daughter, focused her speech on the subject of reproductive justice. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose when to have my children, and with whom, when I felt supported and able to balance our lives, knowing as all mothers know that the scales must and will tip towards our children,” she said.
“I’m grateful for the acknowledgment of the choices I’ve made, and I’m also grateful to have lived at a moment in our society where choice exists. Because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice,” Williams acknowledged, encouraging women “18 to 118” to “vote in your own self-interest. It’s what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them.”
After Williams’s speech, praise streamed in from NARAL, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton. But it’s important to note that Williams isn’t new to advocacy; she’s been speaking out about the issues that matter to her for years.
“The next time a woman, and especially a woman of color—because she stands to make 52 cents on the dollar compared to her white male counterpart—tells you what she needs in order to do her job, listen to her, believe her,” Williams said at the Emmys. Her centering of the specific inequities faced by women of color wasn’t an isolated choice; in 2018, Williams’s date to the Golden Globes was activist Tarana Burke, the original founder of #MeToo and senior director of Girls for Gender Equity, who has frequently been erased from the movement.
According to a 2018 Elle article, Burke initially felt uncomfortable attending the event on her own, and suggested to Williams that other advocates join them. Together, Williams and Burke rallied Hollywood, and it worked; activists including National Domestic Workers Alliance director Ai-Jen Poo and cofounder and codirector of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United Saru Jayaraman also attended the event.
Williams is a member of Time’s Up, and in 2018, she praised Wahlberg for donating his reshoot fees from All the Money in the World to the organization. In April, she spoke to lawmakers on Capitol Hill about her support for the Paycheck Fairness Act.
While Williams’s speech at the Globes on Sunday made for great TV, her commitment to improving the lives of women goes beyond award-show patter. In this, an election year, she urged women to take the future into their hands: “Don’t forget we are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make it look more like us.”
See Every Look From the 2020 Golden Globe Awards Red Carpet:
Golden Globes 2020: Fashion—Live From the Red Carpet
Affluent Americans may want to double-check how much of their bank deposits are protected by government-backed insurance. The rules governing trust accounts just changed.
Former NBA guard Darius Morris has died at the age of 33. He played for five teams during his four NBA seasons. Morris played college basketball at Michigan.