Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Beverly Hill. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Beverly, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

We created a large and visually powerful exhibit to represent the 143 million women and girls who have been eliminated from our world due to social causes.

We used baby booties, handcrafted by 500 marginalized women in 30 low income countries. Each pair represents 10,000 “missing” women. We paid the women fairly for their handiwork so that the very creation of our exhibit would economically empower vulnerable women. We asked them to use materials traditional to their cultures so that we could showcase their artisanal traditions and make these normally invisible women visible through their beautiful handiwork.

The 14,300 pairs of baby booties are arranged in a floor-to-ceiling labyrinth that fills 2,000 square feet (200 square meters). Sound boxes with the voices of women and girls (in many languages) cut on and off, emphasizing the ephemeral nature of their lives. Large photos of some of the women who made baby booties hang inside the labyrinth.

Educational posters provide basic information about the scale, causes, and social consequences of gendercide.

When we exhibit, we often issue a call to local professional artists, asking them to create art that responds to our exhibit.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Before founding the Gendercide Awareness Project (Gendap) in 2011, I worked first as a college lecturer and then as a sculptor. I directed both my academic and artistic skills into the nonprofit and use them to this day.

While still lecturing in History of Science, I developed a strong interest in global women’s rights. As I educated myself, I was astonished to learn that in many parts of the world, women and girls are so oppressed that they simply do not survive. Their premature deaths create a measurable dent in the global female population — with 3.7% of it missing.

It was a New York Times Magazine article that finally ignited the spark for the Gendercide Awareness Project.

We have two objectives:
• to raise awareness about gendercide, particularly through our art exhibit
• to take action by educating at-risk girls in developing countries

To succeed, it requires a team of smart, skilled, and energetic women who supply essential skills and expertise. I love working with this multi-cultural, multi-talented team of 14 professional women.

The Gendap Team is 100% volunteer and deeply committed to the work – to the point that team members pay 100% of the organization’s overhead costs.

To date, we have educated 3.9 million people about gendercide, largely through news coverage of the art exhbit. We also have funded 250 girl-years of education for at-risk girls in seven low-income countries.

When we began our work in 2011, only a handful of tiny organizations existed to combat gendercide. Most of them focused on a single country. Unbelievably, this is still the case today. Tiny as we are, we are the world’s second leading umbrella organization, exceeded only by the United Nations Population Fund.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Have you ever had a moment when your life suddenly changed course?

It happened to me. It was January 2004 – twenty years ago. I had two young children, and my husband had kindly offered to watch our children so I could read the Sunday paper. I headed to a favorite café, ‘New York Times’ tucked under my arm, having no idea that an article I was about to read would change me profoundly.

The story was called “Sex Slaves on Main Street,” written by Peter Landesman. Landesman was one of the first journalists to investigate international sex trafficking rings, still largely unknown in 2004. He risked his life to document these criminal activities. Here is one of his most compelling photos, taken from a rooftop in Mexico, where he had concealed himself. This image ripped me in pieces and changed me forever.

This girl is young – maybe 15 years old. She has been abducted, and here, her traffickers are “breaking her in.“ That means they are getting her accustomed to being raped 20 – 30 times a day — until she simply stops resisting. The men in the photo are volunteers who turned out to help with this process.

Seeing that photo, I shifted from shock, to grief, to anger. How dared they do this to her? I vowed to myself, to God, to the Universe, that I would do something to stop this. I couldn’t do much at the time because I had young children, but I resolved I would do something later when my children didn’t need me so much. I honored that promise; seven years later I recruited a team of volunteers to form the Gendercide Awareness Project, gendap.org.

The issue of choice shifted from sex trafficking to gendercide. That was because during those seven years, sex trafficking exploded in the news, triggering the formation of excellent and effective anti-trafficking organizations. Gendercide, on the other hand, remained under-reported and largely unknown. Almost no one knew that more than 100 million women and girls were demographically “missing” from the world population. Media coverage of gendercide centered on female feticide (sex-selective abortion of female fetuses), which is just part of gendercide.

In 2011, when we formed, just a handful of tiny, ragtag nonprofits worked on gendercide, most of them focused on a single country. We and one other organization served as umbrella groups, tackling the problem globally. Unbelievably, that is still true today. As tiny as we are, we are the world’s second largest organization, exceeded only by the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA.

The other reason for addressing gendercide was that we had a plan. Although I am neither a visionary nor a dreamer, I had a dream in 2010 that inspired me as powerfully as the Landesman photo disturbed me. In my dream, I saw a thin cable — like a clothesline — suspended ten feet above the ground, with pairs of baby booties dangling every foot or so. The line extended as far as the eye could see in either direction. Even as I was dreaming, I said to myself, “Oh, I get it. This is about gendercide!”

When I awakened the next morning, I calculated that if each pair of baby booties represented 10,000 “missing” females, the cable would extend two miles. This was the genesis of our art exhibit “Where have all the women gone?!” We modified the design for indoor display with 14,300 pairs of baby booties arranged in a floor-to-ceiling labyrinth that fills 2,000 square feet. Each pair represents 10,000 missing women, for a total of 143 million — the number last reported by the UN Population Fund, UNFPA.

We added audio to the exhibit. As visitors walk through the labyrinth, they hear the voices of women and girls — singing, talking, laughing, and chanting in many languages. The voices cut off abruptly, emphasizing the ephemeral nature of their lives.

The POWER of the exhibit is that it puts the atrocity of gendercide in the news. Gendercide passes under the media radar because, in a world where news relies on images, it cannot be photographed. Gendercide is not a headline-gripping explosion of violence. Rather, it is an ongoing attrition of women and girls that occurs in the privacy of the home against a victim who is nearly voiceless. The result is that very few people know about it. Our art exhibit gives journalists powerful visuals for stories about gendercide.

The BEAUTY of the exhibit is that the baby booties were made by vulnerable women in 30 low-income countries — by women who are at risk for becoming gendercide statistics. We paid them fairly for their time and skill, so that in the very creation of the exhibit, we could empower at-risk women. We asked the women to use materials traditional to their cultures and to lavishly embellish the baby booties — as if for their own daughters. The resulting “art” baby booties are as beautiful, playful, and unique as the missing females they represent. By showcasing the handiwork of these socially invisible women, we make them visible. Large photos of some of them hang inside the labyrinth.

We also added audio. As visitors walk through the labyrinth, they hear the voices of women and girls — singing, talking, laughing, and chanting in many languages. The voices cut on and off abruptly, emphasizing the ephemeral nature of their lives.

The exhibit premiered in the Dallas Arts District in 2017 and traveled to Toronto for the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 2018. It was mothballed during Covid, then emerged for a year-long tour of Mexico in 2022-23.

In Mexico, we customized our information to spotlight Mexico’s terrible femicide problem. There are ten femicides per day in Mexico — a shocking and unacceptable number. Despite media activism and huge protests, political leaders and law enforcement in Mexico largely ignore the problem.

Our team felt a thrill of pride and triumph in the way our Mexican partner organizations leveraged the exhibit for worthy, practical action. At the University Ibero-León, for example, the school offered workshops on healthy masculinity to challenge the toxic culture of machismo.

At the University Centroamericana, UNICA, the Dean was so moved by the exhibit that she donated money and CHILDCARE for 100 single mothers to finish their high school degrees. Those women will finish a year from now, and I hope to attend their graduation. UNICA organized a host of other events to spread the exhibit’s message, bring the community in to see the exhibit, and take practical action to help vulnerable women. These included countless media interviews, concerts, lectures by feminists, human rights leaders, and sociologists of femicide, self-defense classes for women, e-commerce workshops for women, and readings by a nationally celebrated feminist poet.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

So far, this sounds successful or — I flatter myself — even amazing, right? Let me tell you, that when asked to tell my story, I felt so overwhelmed and stressed that I got sick for a week. Normally, writing is one of my strengths; I’ve published a lot. But this time I was in the grips of writer’s block and a real loathing for the task. Why?

I might need a therapist to fully plumb my fear, but I know myself enough to recognize that I’ve had a lifelong fear of failure and a monster case of Imposter Syndrome. Fear of failure boils down to fear of shame, and intense shame is an intolerable, gut-wrenching feeling — akin to rejection from someone you adore and place on a pedestal in your inner world.

When I launched the Gendercide Awareness Project, I saw it not only as the natural expression of my urgent concern for the world’s women, but also as a test of my own worth. Earlier in life, I had suffered a career failure, and this felt like an opportunity for redemption. I poured myself into the new project, fueled not only by a passion for women’s causes, but also by a driving desire to prove myself to a skeptical world.

I stepped out in faith, not knowing where the project would go, and never able to see more than one step ahead. Success hinged on too many variables beyond my control for it to be assured, so I ran a real risk of failure. The fear gnawed at my insides even as I presented a strong and confident face to the world. Sometimes I felt like a liar; sometimes I felt strong. It all depended on how things were going at the moment. I felt like a bauble tossed about by circumstances.

Gradually, I began to liberate myself from the prison of circumstances and take control. I reached down deep into myself for strength. What I pulled up was not the fierce strength I wanted, for I still had moments where, in the privacy of my own head, my voice quivered, and my knees wobbled.  What I got instead was the vision and direction to inspire our team, a habit of servant leadership, and abundant energy for legwork. It was enough.

It proved to be enough when we experienced an enormous setback . We had worked with a renowned organization for 2.5 years to display our exhibit in a premiere venue known around the world. We were elated! For me, this was the triumph I needed to finally prove my value — to myself and that skeptical world. However, just two months before opening, our partner organization cancelled the exhibit due to political concerns.

The old me would have dissolved and drowned in a vortex of defeat. The newer me absorbed the shock, said no to defeat, and led our team through tremendous disappointment.

We had developed a second prong in our battle to end gendercide — a Girls’ Education Program. We believe (and still believe) that educating vulnerable girls in low-income countries is the best long-term strategy to end gendercide. That’s because education makes these girls self-reliant and gives them tools to fight for their rights, which are not honored and enforced in most countries.

After the setback, we doubled down on our Girls’ Education Program, increasing funding and educating more girls. This resilient response kept our nonprofit alive while we re-equilibrated and planned the Mexico Tour, which was a big success.
Was it as big a success as the cancelled event? No. We did not reach even a quarter as many people as we would have with the cancelled event.

Nevertheless, there are 100 single mothers in Mexico earning their high school degrees and looking forward to better jobs when they finish. They feel hope. They are proud to provide a higher standard of living and better education for their children. Most moving of all, completely on their own initiative, the scholarship mothers pledged to each other that they would not let a single mother fall behind and drop out. They pledged to support each other practically — with childcare, rides, meals, sick care, whatever was needed — so that each woman could finish her high school degree while simultaneously working, caring for children, and caring for relatives.

In addition, we have funded 250 girls-years of education in seven low-income countries. We have helped provide these young women with opportunity and mentoring; without our support, they never would have gone to school.

In the face of the global need, these accomplishments seem miniscule, and yet they demanded so much from us. They took all the time, talent, and energy we could give.

I have learned that meaningful change comes about through small steps that cost a lot. In our metrics-based culture, I heed metrics but try not to be obsessed with them. It is important to remember that effort can be directed broadly to help many people in a small way — or focused narrowly to help a few people in a profound way. It’s the difference between a political leader and a schoolteacher, for example, or between a wellness guru and Anne Sullivan, who taught just one student — Helen Keller. Which individual would you choose to be? Metrics can mask this.

Where does this leave me? I still teeter between feelings of success and failure, but with more time on the successful side. I have learned that no triumph will be big enough to give me the self-worth I crave. If I look to external success and metrics to prove my worth, I’ll run and strive on a treadwheel forever. That’s not a good life. I haven’t figured it all out, but I’ve made good progress.

Contact Info:

• Website: gendap.org
• Facebook: facebook.com/gendap
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gendercide-awareness-project/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverly-hill-5b639618/
• Twitter: twitter.com/gendaporg
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/gendaporg

Image Credits
Uganda Empowers, Cambodian Village Fund, Hands in Outreach (3 little girls from Nepal), Gendercide Awareness Project (art exhibit photos), Peter Landesman (image of trafficked girl and men lined up in Mexico). I do not have permission from Peter Landesman to use this photo because I cannot figure out how to contact him. He is secretive with his contact information for obvious reasons. The online version of the 2004 NYTimes story has all the photos stripped out now; indicating that the photos belong to Landesman, not the NYTimes. Can you advise me on contacting Peter Landesman?