It has been an honour to get selected by Pan Macmillan to read and review this book about women empowerment and how women lift each other up, written by the person who has spent most of her life studying and implementing just that – Melinda Gates.
Melinda Gates needs no introduction. Ranked as one of the most powerful woman in the world, Melinda Gates, she has also won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016 for philanthropic works. Her reach to lift the women of Malawi, Niger, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mbuyuni in Tanzania, Jharkhand, Shivgarh in Uttar Pradesh, regions in Central India, Floyd County in Kentucky and many more have been noted and praised worldwide. She writes this book to document this journey and her insights on how we can change traditional, illogical practices in the disadvantages regions of developing economies.
Because sometimes all that’s needed to lift women up is to stop pulling them down.
Melinda Gates, “The Moment of Lift”
In keeping with the theme of the book, she has also highlighted works by fellow women: Dr. Agnes Binagwaho (former health minister of Rwanda), Ati Pujiastuti (a midwife in Indonesia), Margaret Sanger (the lady to open the first clinic in USA that offered contraceptives), Pia Cayetano (a senator in Philippine Government), Malala Yousafzai (a Pakistani education activist), Kakenya Ntaiya (a Kenyan educator and social activist), Sister Sudha Varghese (an educator in the Musahar (lower caste) community in India), Marilyn Waring (an economist), Princess Mabel van Oranje (a human rights activist) and Molly Melching (a teacher in Senegal), and men like Melinda’s mentor and guide Hans Rosling (a Swedish physician and statistician), Fazie Hasan Abed (a Bangaledeshi educationist) and Gary Barker (founder of MenCare). These people have taken up a sphere of work and contributed their heart and soul into their cause. These causes aim to make the life of women easier, and to enable them to ensure a quality of life that men take for granted.
Some of the issues that Melinda has spoken about in this book are:
- The horrible practice of female genital cutting of girl children in countries in Africa
- The problem of making contraceptives accessible to women along with changing the mindset of the men in their lives around family planning. Merely handing out condoms or injections is not the solution to an entire mindset of birthing more kids in order to help with agricultural work
- The problem of providing free education to girls to prevent them from succumbing to child marriage and to ensure a bright future by helping them enter college. However, most parents are hesitant to provide education to girls for a number of reasons
- The fight to bring recognition to unpaid work over the years. Unpaid work means the work done by women homemakers free of cost
- The struggles women face when their husbands do not participate in house work
- The inequalities implemented in the laws and regulations of various countries where the contribution of women are not permitted, forget acknowledged
- The reluctance of the Catholic Church to allow women to become priests in the Church
Melinda does not stop at merely listing out problems: she makes a strong point about why the problem must be solved with empathy and not just by throwing money at people, the potential barriers to solving these age-old problems, what’s the best way to solve the problem completely and not give up halfway, what happens post solving one problem – does it lead to another or does it solve another problem as well? To summarise, I’d like to share a quote from the book:
If love were enough to save a life, no mother would ever bury her baby – we need the science as well. But the way you deliver the science is just as important as the science itself.
Melinda Gates, “The Moment of Lift”
To add a personal touch, Melinda also speaks about how she incorporated the values of equality within her home too. She started small, by encouraging Bill to drive the kids to school and thereby enlightening families in her hometown about the renewed role of husbands at home. She also speaks about her journey through Microsoft and the lessons learned and the impact she made.
If you’d like to read a free excerpt of the book, head on to the website Gates Notes and log in to get access to the same. The link is here.
I’d like to leave you with this quote from the book that is a question which, according to Melinda, honours how we learn and grow.
What do you know now in a deeper way than you knew it before?
Killian Noe, founder of Recovery Cafe and best friend of Melinda Gates
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