The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by
Melinda Gates
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
The Moment of Lift is a memoir of sorts, as well as an enlightening account showing the benefits to the mission of solving some of the world's large problems - hunger, poverty and pandemic among them - to be gained by empowering women.
Melinda Gates relates through a number of stories how she and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grew in understanding of the importance of empowering women. For Melinda, the stories are personal and one on one, and include experiences in her professional life before helping to lead the Foundation as well as her personal encounters with women who are experiencing some of the problems the Foundation seeks to help address. There are many touching moments to these stories that will leave you inspired.
Also interesting were the stories she relates of how within the Foundation there was pushback at first to the notion that "empowering women" was somehow a goal of the organization. You would expect that any organization with Bill Gates' name in it would be data driven, and it's interesting to read how listening well to the people in need (i.e. gathering data) really reinforced the centrality of empowering women to the goals they had set for themselves.
You will definitely be inspired by this book, but it is really a memoir. Meaning that Melinda doesn't attempt to layout tools for you to use, or specific needs for change that you can act on yourself. (She does discuss some of the problem areas in American life / work that need to be addressed.) Fortunately, if you Google "how to empower the women in your life" there are many suggestions you'll find, and after reading this book you'll likely be inspired to try some.
The Moment of Lift links
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