The Moment Of Lift : How Empowering Women Changes The World - Melinda Gates

The Moment Of Lift : How Empowering Women Changes The World 

Melinda Gates, walks us through her present life as an advocate for women's empowerment, not only in developing countries but all around the world

Melinda Gates grew up as a child in a Catholic home, raised by a stay-at-home mother and an aerospace engineer father. By nature of her dad’s occupation, she, alongside her siblings, witnessed a number of space launches. The suspense of the countdowns and the thrills the moment gave would later come to play in her curious mind years later. Later on in her life, a completely grown Melinda Gates sought a connection between the moment of lift for space crafts and human beings, the feminine gender specifically.

“The Moment of Lift” tells a story of a passionate public feminist advocate and shares the lessons and experiences she has gathered over years of traveling and working to help all people lead healthy and productive lives. Melinda Gates, whose journey as a public advocate began with family planning shows us, through her wide bank of experience, the need for a widespread elevation of the woman race.

22 years after being a shy and private mom, Melinda Gates stepped up to the forefront of advocacy for family planning

Melinda Gates talks about her educational background. After bagging a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science and Business, respectively, she started off full-time at Microsoft. She then met the co-founder of the company, Bill Gates, who she later married. As they were about to start raising a family, Melinda Gates decided she was going to quit work right after childbirth. She’d wanted so badly to build an amazing family and her model back then was that the wife stayed at home. According to Melinda, the couple was “lucky not to need my income.”

Not too long after having their first baby, Melinda and Bill Gates established a foundation poised to fight social inequities. The former already changed her mind about not working but made it clear that she only wanted to work behind the scenes. At that point, they’d realized that “children in poor countries were dying from conditions that no kids died from in the United States.” The foundation was set to work on this anomaly.

This quest required Melinda Gates to take learning trips to third-world countries like Malawi. During this trip, she, along with her team, learned that there are no isolated problems; poverty and disease are connected.

It wasn’t Melinda Gates’ plan to focus on gender issues, but she realized that empowering women is the key to reducing and increasing access to healthcare.

Interaction with women during her trip to Malawi informed the need for family planning in Melinda Gates’ heart. There were lots of women with more children than their financial capabilities could handle. After indeed making contraceptives accessible as much as her foundation could, Melinda Gates wasn’t yet done. She still felt the push to do more, influenced by the thought of the millions who still couldn't get these contraceptives.

To Melinda Gates, access to contraceptives is one way to drastically reduce poverty and child death in these developing countries.

“In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.” ~ Melinda Gates

The need to step up begat the need to fund longer-lasting, healthier and more accessible options. The enormity of such a project called for worldwide efforts and Melinda Gates’ voice was needed. While it was a tough call for her due to her Catholic background and her penchant for very private life, Melinda Gates did agree to be a voice for women.

In 2012, alongside the UK government, Bill and Melinda Gates co-sponsored a family planning summit in London. The summit was a recorded success as countries like Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Burkina Faso pledged full support to the cause.

Melinda Gates would later push a “wider woman agenda.” She saw the importance of investing in women and breaking the barriers that impede their progress as a whole. That realization would later inspire her advocacy for the feminine race. According to her, breaking these barriers would not only enrich the woman race but also create a balance between men and women on every cultural and societal ground.

Inequality is founded by an undeserved sense of superiority

Melinda Gates had a deeper look at the dangers of poverty through tales her now – late mentor, Hans Rosling shared with her of his experiences as a volunteer doctor in remote areas in Mozambique. She had also witnessed some of this craze herself during her visits to Africa and South Asia. These experiences helped Melinda Gates and Hans Rosling form an opinion that poverty isn’t defined by lack of $1.90 a day — as policymakers had suggested. Poverty, to this philanthropic duo, is taking days to get to the hospital when you are dying. It is not being able to save your children when mothers with more money could.

“Poverty is the most disempowering force on earth” ~ Melinda Gates.

Spurred by tales and first-hand experiences, Melinda Gates sought to attack the poverty phenomenon. Her strategy was to help mothers protect their children. She deduced that in so doing, those kids could grow, get an education, and improve the lifestyle of their family.

In every society, the poor are pushed to the margins. Put aside the intervention of charity, millions of people do not have access to the healthcare they need. The problem is delivery — medical services are not reaching them. The poor are treated in society as outsiders; as are women. And this just establishes that the society is subconsciously insecure in itself.

People on the lower side of the margin are mere victims of the deep-seated need, as humans, to create outsiders.

Unplanned pregnancies are a deterrent to women and society at large

An unplanned pregnancy can be a very devastating development for a woman, especially one who finds survival difficult already.

That women can time and space their births is a huge blessing. Not only is it healthier for the mother but for the baby also.

Another benefit of planned parenthood is that parents can plan and pull out resources for their kids more appropriately.

Despite attempts to discredit contraceptives and conflate it with abortion, a very controversial topic in the US, these methods of family planning remain lifesavers. Men’s and women’s interests here should align. Sadly, it’s not the case. A larger percentage of male gender is poised against the cause. Men need to take a pause and see that family planning isn’t just a population control scheme, neither is it a competition between the two genders.

Family planning is necessary for the improved health and growth of every society.

Another approach to women’s empowerment is to educate young girls

“Education is a vital step on the path to empowerment for women” ~ Melinda Gates.

Education breeds knowledge. Knowledge is power. Only in being learned can women run organizations, earn incomes, run businesses, and therefore, take charge of the society. It is very important for every member of society to send the girl child to school.

It is important that every child gets an education; it lifts their sense of self and changes their future.

However, it’s sad that the girl child is often left out of this quest for knowledge. Studies show that in many developing countries, the boy is granted access to education while the girl is made to stay behind at home.

Growing up, the woman is relegated to house chores and childcare while the man goes out to “save the world”.

“The Moment of Lift” points out the need for gender equality; women should be given as much chance as men. The archaic tradition that limits women and denies them education is unfair and should be abolished.

The lift from sending girls to school is highly stunning. The good deed goes on for generations, leading to greater literacy, faster income growth, lower chances of early marriages and more productive living. Girls’ education has transformative effects on the general health, empowerment, and economic advancement of the female species.

Another look to education for women is that it gives them an undeniable sense of self and rights. Women, all around the world, are considered easy targets of abuse and relegation. However, acquiring a wide range of knowledge enables them to speak up for themselves and reject unfair societal placement.

Unpaid work does nothing but hinders women’s progress

In many parts of the world, women have little or no rights.

In poorer countries, women are treated as nothing more than home keepers. They spend their life relegated to doing unpaid work as house chores. In every home, unpaid work is sort of unavoidable but it’s unfair when women are left to do most, if not all of it. Studies show that women around the world spend more than twice as many hours as men on unpaid work. This time could be used in doing more developing things; getting a degree, learning a craft or running a business.

When women can reduce the time they spend on these unpaid work, they automatically can spend more time on paid work and do better for themselves and the society, at large.

This chapter seeks to solve the inequality behind unpaid work. But this feat can’t be achieved until society sees the gender bias that drives it. Men are as much natural caregivers as women and should learn to channel that hidden ability.

Male dominance is harmful to the society. Every woman deserves equal partnership as it’s really not fair to have their lives controlled by a false hierarchy based on gender.

Child marriage should be avoided as it poses many dangers to the female child

It’s almost impossible to believe that girl children are often forced and tricked into marrying older strangers who they’re supposed to serve for the rest of their lives. Child marriage, till date, is practiced in some parts of the world and is the complete opposite of what equal partnership stands for.

Many have justifications for this barbaric act. But the justifications don’t beat the danger these kids are exposed to. It’s also quite disturbing to note that these families often have a thing or two to gain from marrying their female children early. However, every society needs to learn to ignore these incentives and take a stand on what’s right.

Below are some of the cons of child marriage:
• There is so much power imbalance that abuse is inevitable.
• Girls who are forced into marriage miss out on any chance for advancement.
• It could pose dangers to the woman’s health — the leading cause of death for girls between ages 15 to 19 is childbirth. Also, child brides are more prone to HIV than their unmarried counterparts.
• A woman forced into early marriage is at more risk of being poverty-stricken.

It is not enough to fight child marriage by itself; the culture is the culprit. Every tradition that encourages the molestation of women needs to be abandoned. Women should be free to make their own choices. Most notably, marriage should be a woman’s happy place.

Gender barriers also need to be eliminated in the economic sector

Women are usually set aside in the agricultural sector. Men are given all the credit as it is assumed they do all the work. This is however untrue as studies show that women do as much farming as their male counterparts. The only let – down is that they don’t yield as much. And this is basically because of the many limitations set against women in this field.

In many developing countries, men dominantly make the decisions while the women do the work.

To avoid more of such one-sidedness, women’s opinions should be sought when working towards development in agriculture. This way, they not only have as much access to resources as they should, but they can also be an active part of the system.

Farming is not the only area stunted by gender bias. In fact, about 154 countries have laws that restrict women from some jobs. There are even many countries with laws that control personal aspects of a woman’s life such as travelling, owning a property and even, opening a bank account. These limitations are unjust and should be fought law by law, sector by sector, and person to person.

The role religion plays in the discrimination of women shouldn’t be overlooked

“This system of deprivation is based on the presumption that men and boys are superior to women and girls, and it is supported by some male religious leaders who distort the Holy Bible, the Koran, and other sacred texts to perpetuate their claim that females are, in some basic ways, inferior to them, unqualified to serve God on equal terms”~ Jimmy Carter.

It is indeed rare to see an ardent religious man speak up for the oppressed female species. Jimmy Carter, however, does so in his book “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.” In the book, he addresses the anomaly of gender inequality, pointing out the root cause. According to Carter, the culprit is man’s false interpretation of the scriptures.

It is without a doubt that the societal cast-down of the female species is greatly influenced by the practice of a male-dominant religion.

The false hierarchy that places women below men is an abusive culture that needs to be tackled

As if the domestic oppression is not enough, women still have to face unfair bias in their workplaces. They get paid less than their male counterparts for the same work. And they have extra salt thrown on their wounds by superiors who insist they don’t have what it takes. The system is flawed and every woman has to work hand-in-hand to fix it.

Every form of societal abuse need to be eliminated.

Every woman needs to stand up and speak for themselves. The chorus that emanates from women collectively lending their voice to a cause is often very effective as the echoes can’t be ignored. These voices need to collectively work against the inappropriate gender hierarchy in workplaces. Only this way can there be a workplace culture that expands opportunities for women, promotes diversity and doesn’t tolerate sexual harassment.

Another important mission is to build a workplace with a sympathetic disposition on its workers.

Employers need to understand their workers’ duties to family and not make it so difficult to balance family commitments with work.

The importance of every woman coming together cannot be overemphasized

The feminine gender, despite the bias, is not left out of the saying: “Unity is strength.” Unity really does make improvements, as past movements like the #MeToo movement have shown. Women need to leave the margin and take their rightful place in society, not above men but beside them — right at the center of the society.

It takes a great deal of courage but if the female gender is to gain equal respect in society, it has to be demanded!

Every woman also needs to support the other. There is so much value in accepting people’s suffering without giving it back. Women should connect with each other more emphatically and not feel better than the other.

Conclusion

There is an urgent call to action. A call for women to be more, to be better. In every sphere of the world. Women should be empowered to step up to bigger roles in the society.

While gender inequality has eaten deep into most communities, women should hold tightly onto each other’s hand and say No. The argument for equality is being heard; the fight is being seen, and things are getting better. The movement needs to continue. Soon, the goal will be reached.

However, the supreme goal for humanity isn’t equality but connection. Every human needs to come together as one to create a place where no one is left behind. A place to love without limits. That, is the moment of lift.

Speak up when and where you can. This will not only help you find a safe place in your voice, but it will also improve your sense of self. Always remember you have a responsibility to yourself to speak up against every form of unfairness. Also, be nice to everyone you come across as love is the ultimate bridge of light.