How Empowering Women Changes the World
The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
In the 1990s, a man named José Gómez de León spearheaded a new idea in Mexico. His team believed that women and girls were “agents of development” and they put this perspective into action. The government started to treat education like a job and paid mothers to send their daughters to school — a third-grader might earn $10 a month while a high schooler would bring in $60. They dubbed the program Oportunidades — “opportunities.” 📚
After the program was piloted, girls in Oportunidades had a 20 percent greater likelihood to go to school and also stay in school longer. The program supported close to 6 million families. Merely two decades after the program launched, Mexico has not only achieved gender parity at the primary school level but also in high school and college. In fact, Mexico boasts the world’s highest percentage of computer science degrees awarded to women. 🎓
In India, the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are home to one of the country's poorest and most underserved caste, the Musahar. Children living in Musahar villages are often inaccessible due to flooding from the Kosi River. The Musahars have endured decades of exclusion and it wasn’t that long ago that Musahar girls have never been seen at a school.
Sister Sudha Varghese changed that by creating a free boarding school for Musahar girls. Since reaching out to girls from the impoverished and marginalized community, Sister Sudha’s institution has more than 1,500 girls enrolled and runs over 50 centers.
“When they get here, they are looking at the ground all the time. To get their eyes lifted is something.”
Melinda worked closely with the late Swedish researcher and founder of Gapminder, Hans Rosling. Hans recently documented his life’s work into his book, Factfulness, in order to help us develop a fact-based worldview. As Melinda sat beside Hans in the hospital, Hans told her that in order to create real change “you must go to the people on the margins.”
Melinda’s work at the foundation has reflected Hans Rosling’s call-to-action. She embarked on a journey to uncover the stories and empower women all across the globe from Tanzania to India and Malawi. In leading the world’s largest charitable foundation backed by Warren Buffett, she has deeply uncovered the following:
- how contraceptives ended up being the most empowering tool for women ever invented
- why hundreds of millions of women don’t go to secondary school; and
- how empowering female farmers could lift 150 million out of food poverty
During the foundation’s vaccination drives to Malawi, Africa, Melinda had countless conversations with women who had walked long distances to get their children vaccinated. She discovered that vaccination didn’t matter if impoverished women weren’t able to decide if and when they wanted to have more children. If they continued having more babies, how would they be able to provide for their families?
Looking at the data on the subject, in 2012, for example, 260 million women in the world’s 69 least wealthy nations were using contraceptives. But in those same countries, more than 200 million women wanted to use them — but didn’t have access to them. The benefits of increasing access to contraception were clear. A Bangladeshi study in the 1970s observed half the women in a group of villages provided with contraceptives and the other half not.
Twenty years after the study began, the mothers who were provided contraceptives were healthier, their families were better off, and their children were more likely to attend school. For poorer families, contraception can contribute to escaping the vicious trap of the poverty cycle. It can allow women to choose when to become pregnant and as a result better plan their careers and education. They can also raise the children they already have with greater care and a higher likelihood that each child will reach their next birthday.
Contraception is arguably the most important innovation in history for empowering women. This is true even in the United States, where the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and similar legislation have resulted in a 30-year low for unintended pregnancy by allowing women access to free contraceptives.
In order to break the cycles of poverty in impoverished communities, increasing access to all levels of education for women is of paramount importance. Sadly, more than 130 million girls worldwide don’t attend school. In low-income countries, for every 100 boys who go into tertiary education, only 55 girls do the same. While these figures are improving, there is still a lot of work to be done to tackle the complex dynamic forces that create such disparities.
Child marriages are still a widespread phenomenon. In 2012, an estimated 14 million child marriages occurred with one third in emerging economies before age 18. Even more shocking is that almost 10 percent were married before their fifteenth birthday. Child marriage is one of the most disempowering phenomena holding women back.
Women are also being held back in the world of agriculture, and the consequences are severe. A 2011 study showed that female farmers in developing nations produce about 30 percent fewer crops than men, even though they are equally skilled. If women were empowered with better tools and resources, the study concluded that their crop yields could match those of men. The resulting food surplus could lift 150 million people out of poverty.
Melinda spent the majority of her career at Microsoft, where she dedicated a ton of energy tackling gender inequity in an industry she knows best — tech. When she graduated in 1987, 35 percent of IT graduates were women. That number has shrunk to 19 percent today. Another reason why women are underrepresented in tech is that only 2 percent of venture capitalist investors are women. Hence, Melinda backed Aspect Ventures which only invests in companies founded by women or people of color. Diversity is a key aspect on building a healthy and inclusive tech community. Only diverse communities which lift up women to the same level as men can make the best decisions on how humanity as a whole can progress in the future.
While progress has been made across the globe, there is still much work to be done in order to ensure women have the same level of access to resources and opportunities as men. As an advisory board member for WISE at Northeastern, I observed increased participation in the Husky Startup Challenge through intentional programming to boost women-led ventures year over year. During my co-op at ezCater, a Boston-based tech startup, our CEO Stefania Mallett mentioned that “someday it won’t be a big deal that a woman is running a unicorn” on the topic of the growing number of female-founded unicorns in 2019 such as Rent the Runway and Glossier.
Here are some of quotes from the book that I found particularly striking:
In the hearts and minds of empowered women today, “every wall is a door”. Let’s break down the walls and walk through the doors together. — Melinda Gates
Sometimes the best thing a mother can do for her children is not have another child.
In Bangladesh in the 1980s, less than 2 percent of girls were in school by the fifth grade, and half as many girls as boys were in high school.
When BRAC got started in 1985, every one of their schools had to have at least 70 percent girls. All teachers had to be female, and they all had to come from the community, so that parents wouldn’t be afraid for their daughters’ safety.
Today, Bangladesh has more girls attending high school than boys, and BRAC runs 48,000 schools and learning centers around the world. It goes to the most dangerous places in the world for a girl to attend school and slowly helps those cultures change.
If a girl can lift up her view of herself, she can start to change the culture that keeps her down.
The first defense against a culture that hates you is a person who loves you.
Love is the most powerful and underused force for change in the world.
Only love can safely handle power.
Love is the effort to help others flourish — and it often begins with lifting a person’s self-image.
A girl who is given love and support can start to break the self-image that keeps her down. As she gains self-confidence, she sees she can learn. As she learns, she sees her own gifts. As she develops her gifts, she sees her own power; she can defend her own rights. That is what happens when you offer girls love, not hate. You lift their gaze. They gain their voice.
Ultimately, for me perfectionism means hiding who I am. It’s dressing myself up so the people I want to impress don’t come away thinking I’m not as smart or interesting as they thought. It comes from a desperate need to not disappoint others. So I over prepare. And one of the curious things I’ve discovered is that when I’m over prepared I don’t listen as well; I go ahead and say whatever I’ve prepared, whether it responds to the moment or not. I miss the opportunity to improvise or respond well to a surprise. I’m not really there. I’m not my authentic self.
When women are trapped in abuse and isolated from other women, we can’t be a force against violence because we have no voice. But when women gather with one another, share our grief with one another, we find our voice with one another. We create a new culture — not one that was imposed on us, but one we build with our own voices and values.
Strong male voices for freedom and dignity come from men like Gandhi, King, and Mandela who mastered their pain, gave up on vengeance, and preached forgiveness.
Nelson Mandela was once asked if he was still angry at his captors after he was released from prison, and he answered yes, he was still angry for a time, but he realized that if he stayed angry, he would still be a prisoner.
This story is published in The Business of Being Happy and Healthy, brought to you by the Startup Island community.
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