The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction and Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapter 9 and Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Evolution of Melinda Gates’s Philanthropy

Empowering women is the focus of Melinda Gates’s philanthropy. In her early years as a philanthropist, Gates primarily addressed global health. Her efforts to achieve equity in global health started in 1998 with a $100 million joint gift to the Bill & Melinda Gates Children’s Vaccine Program. The following year, Bill and Melinda Gates gave $750 million to the GAVI Alliance to expedite the delivery of vaccines to the world’s poorest children, while the William H. Gates Foundation gave $25 million to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, the largest charitable gift to combat AIDS at that time. Melinda Gates continued to emphasize global health (alongside education) after the creation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, launching the $60 million Global Microbicide Project to combat particularly infectious diseases. Gates’s early efforts had a positive impact on maternal and childcare—but empowering women was never explicitly her goal.

Gates’s goal shifted over time. In 2014, she published an article in Science that detailed the foundation’s commitment to addressing gender inequity. The article promised that the foundation would “put women and girls at the center of global development” as they could not achieve their goals without systematically tackling gender inequity and meeting the specific needs of girls and women in the places they operated (189). Prior to the article’s publication, Gates recognized that some would find the term “women’s empowerment” off-putting. As a result, the foundation’s efforts to empower women began conservatively. These efforts started with small grants to help women in developing countries access equipment, technology, and loans to run productive farms. The foundation also hired gender experts, all of whom were mindful to take into account cultural differences. Gates gathered data until she finally took a public stance with her article. Six months after the article’s publication, Gates traveled to Jharkhand, India, to visit one of the foundation’s grantees—PRADAN—an organization that promotes gender equality by training and supporting women farmers. Empowering women does more than provide them alone with new opportunities—it improves the world as a whole.

Melinda Gates’s Philanthropy and Religiosity

Gates’s faith drives her philanthropy. She was raised by Catholic parents and studied at the all-girls Ursuline Academy in Dallas. In Chapter 1, she credits her teachers for instilling values in her that continue to inform her worldview—notably, social justice. The mission statement of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation centers on equality: “Our mission is to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life” (Gates Foundation). In Chapter 3, Gates recalls hearing Hymn 34 in church and school; the hymn emphasizes the cries of the poor. The nuns taught students that it was their role as Catholics to respond to these cries. Gates does so on a global scale through her work at the foundation. The teachings of the Catholic Church helped form her conscience and continue to fuel her.

Despite her faith, Gates’s relationship with the Church is fractious. Gates harbors unwavering support for family planning—specifically, the promotion of modern contraceptives such as condoms and birth control injections. The foundation’s 2012 family planning summit in London drew the ire of the Church. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, attacked Gates, and the media started referring to her as a “former” and “so-called” Catholic (72). These attacks stung, but they did not deter Gates from promoting contraceptives. She knew family planning had the potential to save millions of lives.

Rather than focus on Church doctrine, Gates chose to follow “the higher teaching of the Church,” that of loving one’s fellow men and women (74). Empathy is at the heart of Gates’s philanthropy. The Church’s opposition to modern contraceptives and women priests exemplifies a tendency endemic to organized religions. All-male clerics make rules that hurt women and families, while reinforcing male dominance: “Some parts of the Church come from God, and some parts come from man—and the part of the Church that excludes women comes from man” (198). Distinguishing what God wants from what men want gave Gates the confidence to advocate for family planning.

Melinda Gates’s Approach to Philanthropy

Gates adopted a hands-on approach to philanthropy from the start. Her involvement in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s early years revolved around study sessions, strategy meetings, and research trips. One of her first trips took her to Malawi, where she saw women waiting in long lines to get vaccines for their children. Not one to stay on the sidelines, Gates spoke with some of the women and learned that they walked long distances to reach the clinic. One of the women, however, surprised her by asking about birth control rather than vaccines: “What about my shot? Why do I have to walk twenty kilometers in this heat to get my shot?” (17). The woman had more children than she could afford to feed; birth control was not a luxury for her, but a matter of life and death. Such meetings altered the course of Gates’s philanthropy, personal interactions becoming a defining aspect of her work.

Gates’s philanthropic style earned her the respect of Dr. Rosling. The two met at an event in 2007, where the former shared her experiences with the poor:

I didn’t talk about sitting back in Seattle reading data and developing theories. Instead, I tried to share what I’d learned from the midwives, nurses, and mothers I had met during my trips to Africa and South Asia. I told stories about women farmers who left their fields to walk for miles to a health clinic and endured a long, hot wait in line only to be told that contraceptives were out of stock. I talked about midwives who said their pay was low, their training slight, and they had no ambulances. I purposely didn’t go into these visits with fixed views; I tried to go with curiosity and a desire to learn (30).

Gates’s speech won over Dr. Rosling, who was initially skeptical of her and her husband. Directly interacting with the poor was key to Dr. Rosling’s work, as was seeing the world through the eyes of the people he was trying to help. Gates internalized Dr. Rosling’s message. For her, ending inequality depends on centering those on the margins: “Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings” (52). People stigmatize others out of fear: “We tend to push out the people who have qualities we’re most afraid we will find in ourselves—and sometimes we falsely ascribe qualities we disown to certain groups” (52). Gates’s hope for the future lies with connection. People who are connected do not marginalize others but are instead driven by empathy and love. Gates believes that all humans are equal; she does not separate herself or feel superior to the people she hopes to help. Rather, she wants to experience the moment of lift together.