Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, joined a panel at the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, on Monday to celebrate International Women’s Day.

The panel, called “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Lead On and Off the Screen,” focused on the challenges that women face on social media and in the media and entertainment industry.

Meghan said she found it “disturbing” how “much of the hate is women completely spewing it to other women.” She said that she “cannot make sense of that.”

Meghan was happy that the panel was live-streamed on YouTube, “because people are going to have access to hear all of this brilliance and all of this insight,” but she also warned about the dangers of the platform.

“And at the same time, it’s a platform that has quite a bit of hate and rhetoric and incentives [for] 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, on their physical safety.”

Meghan shared her own experience of cyberbullying and the social media campaign that she launched when she was 11 years old to change a sexist commercial.

She was joined by Katie Couric, Brooke Shields, and Nancy Wang Yuen, who also shared their stories and insights.

Meghan told the audience how she was offended by a dishwashing soap commercial that said, “women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans” when she was 11 years old.
She said that the commercial reinforced the stereotype that “women belong in the kitchen” and influenced the boys in her class. She decided to write letters to the company and ask them to change the line to “people all over America.”

She said that she was surprised when they actually did it. “It’s funny to look back at it now because that was before social media where you had a reach that was so much greater. It was just an 11-year-old with a pen and paper, but it just goes to show that if you know there’s something wrong, and you use your voice to advocate in the direction of what is right, that can really land and resonate and make huge changes for a lot of people,” she said.

“So, your voice is not small, it just needs to be heard.” “When I was 11, I was playing a prostitute. I wish I had known you,” Shields joked.

“A little different,” Meghan said.

The panel moderator Errin Haines asked, “Social media really has become the place for women and girls to be scrutinized, objectified, bullied, and unfortunately I know this is something you are all too familiar with. How have you been able to manage the seemingly endless toxicity that comes at you?”

Meghan gave an honest answer, saying, “Yes, social media is an environment that I think has a lot of that. You know I think, it’s really interesting as I can reflect on it, I keep my distance from it right now just for my own well-being, 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. And why you would do that, certainly, when you’re pregnant, with a newborn, we all know as moms, it’s such a tender and sacred time.”

The duchess also spoke about the need to support mothers. She said that she and her husband Prince Harry, through their Archewell Foundation, funded a study on the representation of motherhood in the media.
Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, is a longtime advocate for women’s rights and empowerment.

She has used her platform to speak out about the challenges and opportunities that women face in various fields and contexts. She has also supported several initiatives and organizations that aim to improve the lives and well-being of women and girls around the world.