Kardashians Championed These Six Causes Since Show Began 15 Years Ago

The Kardashian-Jenner women are among the most controversial and influential people on the planet.

Mom Kris and sisters Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie are constantly in the headlines, whether it's over their relationships, business ventures or their growing brood of children.

The family rose to fame on the E! reality series Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and they now star in a Hulu series called The Kardashians.

They have come under for fire in the past for perpetuating an unrealistic body image, cultural appropriation, "blackfishing," classism and for generally being out of touch with the rest of the public.

From Kendall Jenner's ill-fated Pepsi commercial, which was quickly pulled after accusations of trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement, to fans slamming Kylie Jenner's many short private jet flights over carbon dioxide emissions.

More recently, Kim was fined $1.26 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission after she allegedly promoted a cryptocurrency asset without disclosing a payment from the company.

But aside from all the controversy, the Kardashian-Jenners are also known to be social justice advocates and they have regularly used their platform to try to bring about change.

Whether it's actively paying visits to food banks and women's shelters or openly discussing issues on their popular shows, the family has shown it's not just about being rich and famous.

They have covered issues such as divorce, addiction, surrogacy, law reform and even the Armenian genocide on their shows and on social media.

Given Kris and her daughters' combined reach on Instagram is almost 1.5 billion followers and the E! show averaged 2 million viewers a week in its earlier seasons, their influence can't be underestimated.

It's also possible for two things to be true at once, while many call for the Kardashians to be held accountable for some of their more problematic behavior, they are also able to use their influence for good.

Here we take a look at some of the social issues they have spoken out about.

Armenia and the Armenian Genocide

The Kardashian sisters and their brother, Rob, have Armenian heritage through their late father, Robert Kardashian.

They have long acknowledged their heritage in many ways, such as visits to the mother country and in social media posts.

Kim even baptized her children at some of the Armenian Orthodox church's holiest sites. She was baptized at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Armenia's main cathedral at the same time as her youngest three children.

The sisters have tirelessly campaigned for international recognition for the 1915 Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire, in what is now known as Turkey.

More than 1.5 million Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks died and many others were deported during the empire's final years.

Kim has long campaigned for the U.S. to recognize the event as genocide, which President Joe Biden did last year on April 24 as part of his statement on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

The U.S. is now one of 33 countries or governments in the world to recognize the genocide.

Previously she had unsuccessfully campaigned for President Barack Obama to use the term "genocide" in a 2015 op-ed for Time magazine.

She wrote for the 100th anniversary of the event: "It's time for Turkey to recognize it. It's not the fault of the people who live there now," she added. The Turkish government acknowledges that many Armenians were killed by Ottoman forces at the time but disputes the figures and denies that the killings were carried out systematically."

Kim also wrote a letter in 2016 after a Wall Street Journal ad taken out by Fact Check Armenia denied the genocide.

Her letter was later reprinted as a full-page ad in The New York Times by the Armenian Educational Foundation.

More recently Kim joined her sisters in calling for a diplomatic solution to the Armenia and Azerbaijan conflict, which saw the neighboring countries clash over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Russia brokered a peace deal between the two countries after a period of fighting, but tensions remain high.

It's not only in active campaigning that Armenia has been raised, but also on the family's reality shows.

One episode focused on Khloé's reluctance to move to Turkey after her then-husband, Lamar Odom had received an offer to play basketball there.

During an episode of their reality series Khloé & Lamar, she revealed feeling upset he might move to Istanbul.

"I do not want to offend anyone in my culture," Khloé said during the episode.

"I do feel a lot of pressure, because I know how much Lamar misses playing basketball."

Law Reform

Kim made the unexpected decision to go to law school and declared she was doing so to push for justice reform in the hopes of freeing inmates wrongly convicted of crimes or on low level drugs charges.

She even visited former President Donald Trump at the White House in 2020 to help secure clemency for Alice Marie Johnson. The then 63-year-old had been sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent drug offence.

In December 2021, Kim revealed she had passed California's "baby bar" exam two years after commencing her studies and following three attempts at taking the test.

Kim is following in the footsteps of her late father Robert, who famously represented O.J. Simpson during his 1990s murder trial.

Surrogacy

The Kardashians have been praised for bringing a discussion of surrogate pregnancies into the mainstream.

Kim and former husband Kanye West chose a surrogate to carry their third and fourth children.

The decision was made after Kim had serious complications during her first two pregnancies and any other pregnancies may have been too dangerous for her.

Her younger sister, Khloé, recently welcomed a son with ex Tristan Thompson via a surrogate.

In 2021, Khloé opened up on how she had struggled to conceive via IVF and that doctors told her she would have an 80 percent chance of miscarrying if she fell pregnant.

Transgender Issues

Despite their very public falling out since, the Kardashian clan supported their former step-parent, Caitlyn Jenner when she revealed she was trans in 2015.

Jenner was known as an "all-American hero" after winning the men's Olympic decathlon gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Game and setting a third successive world record in the process.

She married Kris in 1991 and they welcomed their biological daughters Kendall and Kylie, while Caitlyn served as step-parent to the Kardashian children and appeared as a regular on their reality series.

The family supported Jenner through her coming out, including appearing in a reality series about the process and supporting her when she won ESPY's Arthur Ashe Courage Award.

"I think Caitlyn's decision to publicly come out as a transgender woman and live as Caitlyn Jenner displayed enormous courage and self-acceptance," Maura Mandt, ESPYs co-executive producer, told SI.com in 2015.

Planned Parenthood

The three oldest Kardashian sisters voiced their support for Planned Parenthood in 2017.

Kourtney, Kim and Khloé visited a Planned Parenthood center during an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians to learn about how the organization supports people with health services which include STI testing, general health services, abortion, access to contraception and pregnancy services.

The three women described the experience as "eye-opening" after hearing stories of how the center saved people's lives.

"The perception of Planned Parenthood is that it's this like abortion clinic. That's nothing like what it's like. Hearing that firsthand really made it real for me," Kim said.

Khloé added: "I'm a big fan of Planned Parenthood now. Meeting all the girls and hearing their stories and seeing how many women have been helped by some of the services they have to offer — I think people need to be more educated before they form opinions, and that's what I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to do today."

Coronavirus

The youngest of the family, Kylie Jenner, donated $1m to Los Angeles hospitals at the start of the COVID pandemic so they could buy protective equipment.

She also encouraged her millions of followers to stay safe by quarantining at home after a request by then-U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams.

Not to be outdone, Kim also gave $500 to 1,000 people in December 2020 to help support them during the holiday season.

FDA Regulations

Kourtney teamed up with organization Environmental Working Group (EWG) in 2018 and headed to Capitol Hill to speak to lawmakers about antiquated Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laws are around personal care products.

National cosmetics laws had remained largely unchanged since 1938 and Kourtney revealed her concern at the lack of regulation over product labeling.

"It's really crazy that it's up to us to do the research and figure it out," she said during an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians dedicated to her trip to Washington D.C.

Nneka Leiba of the EWG said at the time: "Most Americans assume that the personal care products they use every day are safe.

"But the Food and Drug Administration does not even require safety testing of ingredients in personal care products before they are put on the market."

The Personal Care Products Safety Act was introduced into Congress by Californian Democratic Senator Dianne Furnstein in June 2021.

The Act called for cosmetics brands and manufacturers to register with the FDA and said each registration "must contain certain information, including an ingredient list for all cosmetic products from a registered facility."