Last week, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced they would be employing an all-female senior staff, making them the first royal household to do so.
The move is hardly surprising for couple, who both have long and vocal histories of feminist activism that predate their relationship. At a UN Conference in 2015, before she even met her now-husband, the actress and UN Ambassador described herself as “a woman and a feminist,” arguing that “women need a seat at the table.” Activism isn’t anything new to Harry, either, who has also been vocal in promoting feminist views. “There are way too many obstacles between girls and the opportunities they deserve,” he said to guests during a speech he gave in Nepal back in 2016.
But while the move to employ an all-female staff is no surprise from a couple of Harry and Meghan’s feminist background, it is a groundbreaking moment for royal history, and even for the U.K. more broadly. As Victoria Murphy reported for Town & Country, the women in the top spots on Harry and Meghan’s team are among a small minority of women in the U.K., where just six of the 100 largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange are helmed by female CEOs and only 32 percent of those companies’ directors are female.
According to Murphy, the current gender pay gap in the U.K. is 8.6 percent for full-time employees and 17.9 percent for all employees. These figures, as Murphy explained, reflect the fact that more women are in part-time, lower-paid positions, while more men are in full-time, senior and better-paid roles.
As public figures whose influence spans the globe, Harry and Meghan’s employment of an all-female senior staff reflects a real, public attempt to address these issues of gender inequality. As Murphy argued, the couple is practicing what Meghan preached to the UN back in 2015 when she said, “It isn’t enough to simply talk about equality, one must believe in it and it isn’t enough to simply believe in it. One must work at it.”
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