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The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Updated: Sep 19, 2024

Title: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World 

What is it? A book 

Author: Melinda Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She is a philanthropist, businesswomen, and an incredible advocate for women and girls around the world. 


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Who should read it? Anyone who has a passion for women’s rights, global and economic development, and empowering our world’s most vulnerable. Melinda believes (and has the data to back it up), that “when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.” 

Two Minute Skinny: Melinda is the perfect example of the saying “do one thing, and do it well.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does a ton of great work, but Melinda truly (at least in this book) is laser focused on the impact that lifting up women and girls - namely by providing access to contraception, education, healthcare, economic opportunity, and equality in the workforce - has on entire communities. 


With data, trends, and powerful stories from countries around the world (including the United States), Melinda shows that empowering women is the key to giving communities the tools they need to not only survive, but begin to thrive in an ever-changing global landscape. The research and the work that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has done with contraceptives alone shows incredible results. They found that “mothers who took contraceptives were healthier. Their children were better nourished. Their families had more wealth. The women had higher wages. Their sons and daughters had more schooling.” Melinda calls contraceptives “the greatest life-saving, poverty-ending, women-empowering innovation ever created.” Melinda recounts similar stories and compelling results of the other initiatives of the Foundation, including access to education and equal representation in the workforce.  


Melinda also spends a great deal of time discussing global economic inequality and how the current balance of power sustains some of our most alarming health issues. At the beginning of the book, she shares a personal, startling realization that helped launch her career and direction with the Foundation. She realized that “children in poor countries were dying from conditions that no kids died from in the United States...We didn’t know about these children’s deaths because they were happening in poor countries, and what’s happening in poor countries doesn’t get much attention in rich countries. That was the biggest shock to my conscience: Millions of children were dying because they were poor, and we weren’t hearing about it because they were poor.” 


The last major theme that is woven throughout the book is the need for diversity in our leadership and in our power structures. Decisions and norms are still determined and maintained by a small minority - namely rich, white men. Until we see diversity (in gender, race, religion, socio-economic status, etc) in decision-makers, Melinda warns, people will continue to be marginalized. She gives an example with the Catholic Church’s ban on contraceptives, stating that she believes that if women were allowed to assume leadership positions in the Church, they would have abolished the ban long ago. She sums the need for diversity up well when she says “women must leave the margins and take our place - not above men or below them, but beside them - at the center of society, adding our voices and making the decisions we are qualified and entitled to make.” 

Best Quote(s): “Because sometimes all that’s needed to lift women up is to stop pulling them down.” 

“What do you know now in a deeper way than you knew it before? I love this question because it honors how we learn and grow. Wisdom isn’t about accumulating more facts, it’s about understanding big truths in a deeper way.”

“As I grew up, I thought abuse would happen less and less. But I was wrong. Adults try to create outsiders, too. In fact, we get better at it. And most of us fall into one of the same three groups: the people who try to create outsiders, the people who are made to feel like outsiders, and the people who stand by and don’t stop it.” 

“Today in the US, we are sending our daughters into a workplace that was designed for our dads - set up on the assumption that employees had partners who would stay home to do the unpaid work of caring for family and tending to the house. Even back then it wasn’t true for everyone. Today it is true for almost no one - except for one significant group. The most powerful positions in society are often occupied by men who do have wives who do not work outside the home. And those men may not fully understand the lives of the people who work for them.” 

“And if you cannot bear the pain of your neighbor’s suffering, then in one way or another, you’re going to push that person to the margins.” 

Rating/Is it worth your time?: Yes! First of all, you’re all quarantined. Take a break from Tiger King to enrich your mind and your perspective. This book really is a quick and easy read - under 300 pages with lots of inspiring, anecdotal stories. Even if you don’t specifically work in fields directly related to gender, public health, or economic development, I promise you that this book has lessons on growth and inclusion that will be relevant to you. 

This book is also worth your time because everyone that is reading this blog is a human being that lives on this planet (I’m assuming). For real though, this book will really make you think critically about how you interact with the rest of our global community and how you, as an individual, have an opportunity to make a difference. They say that “knowledge is power” for a reason. The themes in this book are closely related to what I do for my job, and I still learned a ton, gaining a clearer and better perspective to bring to my own work. 

Listen guys, I really don’t want to commit to reading this whole book: I mean, I really think you should. However, there are a couple podcasts that discuss the book and give Melinda an opportunity to share some of her research and most inspiring stories:

  • Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations (April 29, 2019): Melinda Gates: The Moment of Lift

  • For the Love with Jen Hatmaker Podcast (June 18, 2019): Melinda Gates: The Power of Lifting Up Women

If you end up absolutely loving and getting inspired by this book, I also recommend Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky is an incredible book. It is a little bit older (published in 2009), but still relevant in many ways. They made a documentary too, also called Half the Sky, which is fantastic and available on Amazon. 

 
 
 

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