Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence

In 1991, Anita Hill started something that's still unfinished work. The issues she raises in her new book, touching on gender, race, age, and power, are part of what's tearing America apart right now; she offers insights into their roots, and paths to creating dialogue, and substantive change. A More Perfect Equality is a call to action that offers guidance based on what this brave, committed fighter has learned from decades of advocacy, searching for answers and finding them.

We once thought gender-based violence--from casual harassment to rape and murder--was an individual problem that affected a few; we now know it's cultural and endemic, and happens to our acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family members, and it can be physical, emotional and verbal. Women of color, particularly African American and Latinx women, experience sexual harassment at higher rates than white women. Street harassment is ubiquitous and can escalate to violence. Transgender and nonbinary people are particularly vulnerable.

Anita Hill--arguably the first and most famous survivor of sexual harrassment to speak out--draws on her 30 years as an activist, legal scholar, and advocate, and on the experiences of the thousands of women and men who have told her their stories, to trace the pipeline of behavior that follows individuals from place to place: from home to school to work and back home. In measured, clear, blunt terms, she demonstrates how it impacts nearly every aspect of our lives, including our physical and mental health, housing stability and financial security. She traces its institutional paths in schools and workplaces, and how our descriptive language undermines understanding. And she is uncompromising in her demands that our courts, our laws, and our leaders must address the issue concretely and immediately.