WOMEN+POWER: Jennifer Siebel Newsom

Life moves pretty fast. It is Monday lunchtime when Jennifer Siebel Newsom drops by the office in Washington, just a couple of blocks from the White House, for an interview to promote her new film. Less than two hours later, her husband, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, announces that the couple are under investigation by the justice department.

One strand of the investigation specifically targets Siebel Newsom’s taxes and the California Partners Project, a gender equity non-profit she co-founded that received $4.3m in donations solicited by her husband. Gavin Newsom denounced the move as a “personal vendetta” because the governor is considering running for US president.

Even before the news breaks, Siebel Newsom’s verdict on the administration is withering. “I feel sorry for our country right now because when the father figure, the leader, the president is such a broken, damaging, harmful role model, everyone’s being traumatized,” she says, more in sorrow than in anger. “Everyone’s mental health is not what it could be – should be.”

Siebel Newsom, who turns 52 this week, is not a politician but has long engaged in causes that are anathema to the current president. At Conservation International, she helped women in Africa and Latin America start environmentally friendly businesses. After a spell in Hollywood as an actor, she started her own production company to highlight women’s stories.

Siebel Newsom has the clout to pull in big names: former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the senator Amy Klobuchar, the actor Jameela Jamil, and journalists Gretchen Carlson and Katie Couric are among the film’s cast of talking heads.

They sound the alarm about a mental health crisis: 53% of teenage girls reported feeling persistently sad and hopeless in a 2023 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 27% of high school girls seriously considered attempting to end their life. Whereas depression was once associated with girls aged 16 or 17, now it affects them at 11, 12 and 13.

Much of this is directly tied to the advent of the “like” and “share” buttons that offer a constant source of social comparison and potential exclusion. Miss Representation: Rise Up cites internal documents leaked by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, alleging that tech companies explicitly studied the neurobiology of children to take advantage of their vulnerabilities.

Siebel Newsom is unsparing in her assessment. “AI and social media have been weaponized, not just to objectify and diminish women and girls’ value but to silence women and girls,” she says. “It’s harming our mental health, it’s harming our safety and it’s harming our sense of power, and it’s happening at an unprecedented rate and scale and it’s getting to girls younger and younger. We haven’t done enough to hold tech companies accountable.”