20th Anniversary celebration with activists and advocates Gloria Steinem, Anita Hill, Cindy Gallop, Sonya Passi, and Dr. Joy Buolamwini
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
In this special 20th anniversary episode of Design Matters, host Debbie Millman revisits powerful conversations with five remarkable activists and advocates who have dedicated their lives to dismantling inequality and injustice. (03:15) The episode features excerpts from interviews with feminist icon Gloria Steinem, who shares how her challenging childhood with a depressed mother and absent father shaped her activism; legal scholar Anita Hill, discussing the lasting impact of her 1991 testimony against Clarence Thomas; social entrepreneur Cindy Gallop, who created Make Love Not Porn to combat harmful sexual narratives; gender violence advocate Sonya Passi, explaining how economic abuse perpetuates domestic violence; and computer scientist Joy Buolamwini, whose research exposed racial bias in AI facial recognition systems.
- Core Theme: The episode explores how creativity applied to social activism can create meaningful change, featuring women who designed their professional and personal lives to improve others' lives through courage, innovation, and unwavering determination to challenge systemic inequalities.
Speakers
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem is a legendary journalist, magazine editor, author, and feminist activist who has been advocating for women's rights for over fifty years. Despite growing up with a mother who suffered from depression and addiction, Steinem transformed her difficult childhood into a driving force for activism, becoming one of the most influential voices in the women's rights movement.
Anita Hill
Anita Hill is a distinguished law professor, author, and advocate who became a household name after her 1991 testimony during Clarence Thomas's Senate confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. Her courageous stand against sexual harassment helped bring national attention to gender-based violence and continues to inspire advocacy work three decades later.
Cindy Gallop
Cindy Gallop is a former marketing and advertising executive who transitioned into social entrepreneurship, founding Make Love Not Porn to address the harmful effects of pornography as sex education. She advocates for open, honest dialogue about sexuality and promotes healthy sexual values through her innovative social sex platform.
Sonya Passi
Sonya Passi is a veteran activist and founder of several organizations addressing gender violence, including the Family Violence Appellate Project. With degrees from Cambridge University and UC Berkeley Law School, and experience at Morgan Stanley, she brings a unique perspective to understanding the economic dimensions of domestic violence.
Dr. Joy Buolamwini
Dr. Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist and digital activist whose groundbreaking research exposed racial and gender bias in AI facial recognition systems. Her work at MIT's Media Lab, including the Gender Shades project, has over 3,400 citations and has led to significant conversations about algorithmic bias and the need for more inclusive technology.
Key Takeaways
Transform Personal Pain into Purpose
Gloria Steinem's story demonstrates how difficult childhood experiences can become the foundation for meaningful activism. (06:46) Despite growing up with a mother whose "spirit had been broken" by societal expectations and a largely absent father, Steinem used these experiences to fuel her determination to prevent other women from facing similar fates. She explicitly states she "definitely didn't want to become her" mother, using this as motivation to break generational patterns. This transformation requires recognizing the difference between being crushed by circumstances and being shaped by them - the key being that Steinem always felt loved and respected as an individual, which gave her the foundation to imagine a different life.
Speak Truth Despite Personal Cost
Anita Hill's testimony in 1991 exemplifies the importance of speaking truth even when facing severe personal consequences. (16:22) Hill faced death threats, character assassination, and professional risks, yet her courage to speak about sexual harassment "woke up" an entire nation to issues that had been silenced for generations. Her approach shows that believing in the integrity of your own experience and the right to safety is more important than protecting systems or individuals who perpetuate harm. Hill emphasizes that "what's important is protecting the abuser" is the wrong priority - instead, we must believe survivors and create systems that support them.
Address Root Causes, Not Just Symptoms
Sonya Passi's revelation about the economic dimensions of gender violence illustrates the importance of understanding systemic issues comprehensively. (44:47) Through her work with domestic violence survivors, she discovered that "gender based violence is so economically devastating" - women who had left abusive situations years earlier were still homeless because economic abuse had destroyed their credit, stolen their resources, and eliminated their financial autonomy. This insight led her to recognize that addressing gender violence requires understanding economics, not just providing temporary shelter or legal remedies.
Challenge Systems Through Persistent Innovation
Joy Buolamwini's journey from discovering AI bias to creating systemic change demonstrates the power of persistent innovation in the face of institutional resistance. (54:53) When faculty warned her that studying bias was career suicide, saying "these are the bones of grad students past," she continued anyway because the work "felt important." Her Gender Shades project revealed that AI facial recognition had 100% accuracy for white male faces but near coin-flip results for dark-skinned women. The key lesson is that sometimes the most important work is also the most discouraged - breakthrough change often requires going against conventional wisdom.
Normalize Difficult Conversations
Cindy Gallop's approach to addressing sexual education gaps shows how making taboo topics socially acceptable can create massive social change. (26:59) Her Make Love Not Porn platform operates on the principle that "the issue isn't porn - the issue is that we don't talk about sex." By applying social media dynamics to sexuality and making "real world sex" as shareable as any other aspect of life, she's working to eliminate the shame that allows sexual harassment and violence to flourish. The strategy involves taking conversations out of the shadows and making them part of normal public discourse, which removes the power that perpetrators derive from victims' silence.
Statistics & Facts
- One in three women globally will experience gender-based violence, according to Amnesty International's campaign that inspired Sonya Passi's activism at age 16. (37:27) This statistic was so shocking to Passi not because of its magnitude, but because it was the first time she had encountered this information, leading her to realize this should be "breaking news every single day, front page of every newspaper."
- Joy Buolamwini's Gender Shades project found that AI facial recognition systems had 100% accuracy for white male faces but error rates of up to 34% between the best-performing group (lighter males) and worst-performing group (darker females). (55:22) IBM showed the most dramatic disparity in her research, while Microsoft achieved perfection for "pale males" but significantly lower accuracy for other demographic groups.
- Joy Buolamwini's thesis has generated over 3,400 citations, demonstrating the massive academic and practical impact of her work exposing algorithmic bias in major companies including IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft. (52:21) This citation count reflects how her research has influenced subsequent studies and policy discussions about AI fairness and bias.
