Column: Want to protect women? Forget Trump. Listen to Jennifer Siebel Newsom

Hello and happy Thanksgiving. There are 53 days until the Inauguration, and today we’re talking about moms, daughters, sisters, wives and even the lady at the bakery who sold you the pumpkin pie.

President-elect Donald Trump, as you’ve heard by now, has promised to protect women, whether they like it or not. However, since the election, some women have felt less safe, not more.

Like folks of every sex who didn’t vote for Trump, there has been a sense of uncertainty — and yes, fear — about what rights the incoming administration might attack: Remaining abortion rights? Contraception? Equal pay protections or healthcare rights? Title IX protections against sexual assaults?

So many things are on the line, especially for women.

I recently had the chance to interview Jennifer Siebel Newsom, California’s first partner, at her second Gender Equity Summit in Sacramento — this one focusing on the intersection of health and safety and how to be a leader in uncertain times.

This was our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

It was a reminder, as is this holiday, that community and solidarity are always the best refuge from fear.

First Partner of California Jennifer Siebel Newsom, shown in 2023, blamed herself as a child when her older sister died in a golf cart accident.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Chabria: What made you decide to make health and safety the topic this year, and how did that change with the recent election of Donald Trump?

Siebel Newsom: Our health and safety is everything.

I think aside from not having the same wealth and power or access to power, it is literally what is holding us all back from realizing our potential. And we don’t talk enough about women’s health.

If you think about the medical field, so many of the studies have ignored women’s health. Medicine is prescribed for men’s bodies, based on studies with men.

And I think we’ve so rendered invisible the culture of violence against women and normalized that culture. And having Trump reelected to the White House underscores how invisible women’s suffering and pain is in our country. So this is our time to right the ship.

For me, personally — as in all of my work, starting with “Miss Representation” and my documentaries — the real kind of challenge that needs to be addressed, outside of women’s access to capital and women’s underpayment and the wealth gap, is the issue of violence against women in all forms.

And until we actually address it, acknowledge it, center women’s physical and physiological health as part of public safety, we’re going to continue to live in a patriarchal society where, again, our voices aren’t represented at the tables of power, and our children and our communities suffer because we’re suffering.

Chabria: I know that for you, this is not an abstract idea. You have gone on your own journey and had to create your own safety.

Could you tell us a little bit about the moments in your life where your health and safety have intersected?

Siebel Newsom: Look, we all have our journeys. We all have experiences that ultimately prevent us from perhaps realizing our dreams, fulfilling our potential.

My story really started when I was 6 — a few days from my 7th birthday — and I lost my sister in a [golf cart] accident where I felt like it was my fault.

And in typical Nordic fashion, we maybe went to a therapist or psychologist once. My older sister was my best friend, and it was my fault in my 6-year-old mind. Stacy was 8.

My mom got pregnant, had two more kids. We just kept moving forward. I was suffering in silence.

I found other women in the community who were like mothers to me and big sisters to me — and that’s why the sisterhood is so important to me, because they helped me heal. They guided me, they empowered me, they believed in me.

Anyway, we all handle trauma differently, and I think it’s why I chose a path of wanting to help people. I tried to be a doctor. I was pre-med.

I worked in a children’s hospital in Quito, Ecuador, and fainted every time I saw blood. I was a horrible doctor.

And so I found my way to trying to help women in a different way.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom campaigns in San Leandro in 2021 during the failed effort to recall her husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Chabria: You’ve talked about wanting California to be the “shining beacon on the hill” when it comes to women. What is that vision of California?

Siebel Newsom: Obviously I want California to be the state where women are safe, where women can improve wealth, where women can thrive — physically, psychologically, emotionally. Where women are seen, where women are valued, where we’re respected. Where we’re in leadership, where we’re at the tables of power, representative of our population and our diversity.

But gender, or the perception of gender, is not considered in every public policy decision. Thanks to the current administration, it’s more so — but it’s one of the reasons we convened this gathering, and last year a summit on women’s wealth and power, and will continue to convene in small groups, so that there’s actual activation and partnership and activism afterwards, and so as to influence public policy and to try to institutionalize our values before we leave.

It’s our attempt to basically right this injustice and this wrong that we see across our society: that ultimately, again, if we valued women and we centered women; we paid women equitably; and we didn’t tolerate any harassment or violence against women, we would have a completely different society.

Chabria: You, as a child, lost that safety. How have you rebuilt safety for yourself, and how do you hope to bring that into the work that you do for others?

Siebel Newsom: I felt safety in activism.

Through launching the Representation Project, I’ve built safety through art.

I build safety through my friendships and through girlfriends and through the sisterhood. I am indebted to the women I work with and my best friends, and the sisters and women that I surround myself with daily; that is what makes me feel safe.

My husband makes me feel safe, except for his profession.

Children, animals — if anybody wonders why we have so many animals.

But really just the basics: food, nourishment, fresh air, nature.

It’s why, in my current documentary, we’re addressing tech-facilitated gender-based violence against women as the new backlash against women’s progress, women’s mental health and women’s agency.

It’s honestly why so many women with children step out of politics.

You know, we were doxed.

We had a guy living outside of our house in Sacramento with a gun for five weeks in a camper, and nobody could do anything about it.

When those sorts of things happen, again, our sense of safety goes away, and our sense of trust, and then we don’t have the confidence, or even the will to either put ourselves out there or be in professions that are quite dangerous.

And increasingly for women, politics is dangerous.

It’s also the reason why my own experience going to trial against he-who-shall-not-be-named was important to me, because I wanted to have the back of other women. [Siebel Newsom testified against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein during his Los Angeles rape trial.]

And I wasn’t intending to put myself out there.

But they thought it could help. I’m not sure it did, because they used me being married to a public figure against me in that realm. But feeling like they could say and do anything against me — I think that’s how they treat all women, as we know.

And it’s why I’m championing issues like sex trafficking — because again, if we take a step back, we live in a culture that demeans, ridicules, disrespects, objectifies women and girls.

We are often perceived as property of men. This election in particular has sort of unleashed the toxic misogyny that is so indecent and so cruel and so patriarchal and so harmful to all marginalized communities, all vulnerable communities, but in particular to women and girls.

So the safety issue is first and foremost on my mind, because I know if I’m feeling vulnerable, you all are feeling vulnerable too.

How are we able and going to realize our potential, our dreams, without that sense of safety?

I mean, it’s essential for your ability to thrive.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Joe Biden’s Final Decision Will Be His Toughest — And Most Personal
The what’s next: Capitol Hill’s DOGE-era power players
The L.A. Times special: California farmers were big Trump backers. They may be on collision course over immigrant deportation

Stay golden,
Anita Chabria

P. S.: I’ll be out again both Tuesday and Thursday of next week, finishing up a project that I’ll tell you more about as we get closer to publishing. Thanks for your patience, and for reading. See you Dec. 10.

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