The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates Explains Why Improving Women's Lives is so Vital

I like to think I’m a reasonably informed person. I generally know what is happening in the world. As an American I keep a close eye on the politics in my country and focus less on countries like Canada, England, France, Germany, Russia, China and the other countries vital to the world or close to my country. But to pretend that governments are the only important bodies in our world is to ignore other organizations important to our world.

I picked up The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates because I am a fan of Bill Gates. As someone who loves technology, I have been most of my life. When I considered becoming a computer programmer Microsoft was one place I imagined working, and when he moved from there to work full time at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, I was interested. So, I thought, reading a book by his wife might be a fun way to become more informed on an important part of our world and hear some stories about someone who I have looked up to most of my life.

The Moment of Lift is, in a small part that. You get a far better idea of what they are doing, not because it focuses on the foundation, but because you get a far better idea of the people who are working on it. But far more important are the stories of the people you wouldn’t hear about because they aren’t billionaires and a few important lessons that you wouldn’t expect to learn from a billionaire.

One of the most important points in this book and one that is reinforced throughout is one of equality. It turns out that you can’t create equality if you think you’re better than other people. It seems obvious, but it becomes less evident when you look at the people that Melinda is talking about in this book and the massive gulf between the lives of Melinda and the people she is talking about. Indian sex workers, poor girls who demand education and so many others are treated as not only equals in this book, but as people who you can admire.

The primary theme of this book is that empowering women can change the world. If you had asked me before I read this book if I believed that I would have said yes. And I might have been able to give some superficial points about how allowing people to be involved in the economy is good. How more voices in government and society are good, and platitudes about how everyone deserves respect. But the specific reasons wouldn’t be there.

That goes back to the sex workers. Women who are doing a job not because they are lazy, cowardly or any other assumption you might make, but because it’s the best way to improve the lives of their children. And women who when treated as equals and listened to could change the world. The story, told better and more first hand by Melinda, is that they were trying to convince these women to force their clients to wear condoms. An important goal in trying to stop the spread of aids among other issues. But when they listened to the women, what they discovered was that they didn’t need help with that. It turns out that women who are forced into sex work understand how condoms work. What they needed help with was violence. And there was a simple solution. If when one of these women was attacked, often by the police, other women came to help it made a difference. So, by helping them to work together, they could not only lower violence against them, but convince more people to use condoms.

This is only one of many examples the book gives of why working towards helping women is so vital to improving society. Another obvious example that only truly seems obvious to some of us after it is explained is that making sure that the primary caretakers of children are educated makes it easier for them to help their children become educated. So women staying in school longer improves the education of society.

This book will not have an enormous impact on my daily life in a lot of major ways. But it’s an important book for as many people to read as possible because understanding the many ways in which the world can be made better is important even for those of us who don’t have a 50 billion dollar foundation because you need not have money to listen. You don’t have to have money to make certain that the women in your life are equal partners. And you can exert that small but important pressure on politicians and other leaders to make certain that things keep moving in the right way.