Meghan Markle wants to raise her baby to be a feminist—regardless of its gender

The Duchess of Sussex is due this spring, and while she’s not announcing the baby’s sex (it’s a surprise!) today she announced that whether this baby is a girl or a boy, they’re going to be raised as a feminist.

On Friday Markle attended an International Women’s Day event for the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, of which she is Vice-President. She was part of a panel of leading women the palace referred to as “female thought-leaders and activists” discussing the issues women are facing in 2019.

As People reports, the panel chair, Anne McElvoy, introduced the Duchess as “a royal not afraid to embrace full-on feminism.”

And Markle made it clear that she’ll be raising a little feminist, too, telling the crowd, “It’s funny, I’ve actually been joking in the past few weeks…I had seen this documentary on Netflix about feminism and one of the things they said during pregnancy is, ‘I feel the embryonic kicking of feminism.'”

After pausing (because the crowd was laughing), she continued: “I loved that, so boy or girl, or whatever it is, we hope that’s the case.”

This isn’t the first time Markle’s commented about how she plans to raise her child with respect to gender roles. Vanity Fair reported Markle told friends that she wants to avoid gender stereotypes and take a fluid approach to raising her baby.

The palace has not confirmed these comments, but it’s not that far fetched, and it definitely doesn’t imply that the royal couple will be raising the child as “genderless” as much as it suggests they’re not going to be painting the nursery pink or blue (the rumor is grey and white).

This is not that shocking. Plenty of parents do modern, gender neutral nursery decor and choose to raise their kids in households that don’t put a lot of emphasis on gender roles and rather just let kids grow into their own personalities.

Feminism, at its core, is about equality and choice. And what Markle’s suggesting is that she will raise her child to view all people as equal and worthy of opportunity, and respect how her child identifies and the choices they make as an individual.

And we’re here for it.

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• On International Women’s Day, we celebrate 10 everyday women who do extraordinary things
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