The Moment of Lift

This is essentially an advertisement for the work the Gates Foundation does around the world with women and girls. Gates gives a voice to many women around the world who support hardships and highlights some of the key elements of progress that are most effective in empowering women and communities in poverty. Gates is emphatic that lifting women up around the world will also lift the communities around them. She uses some statistics to prove this point but they are light, as you would expect in a popular reading book.
My biggest problem with this book is the point-of-view of Gates. She toots her own horn quite a bit. For example, in one of the chapters, she talks about how she admittedly did a bad job when she worked at Microsoft allowing people to have family leave. Despite of this, she gives an anecdote of when she once succeeded at letting someone who worked for her see his sick brother. She apologizes for giving a positive anecdote for an enterprise she admittedly failed at but I don't forgive her.
I was personally distracted imagining Gates visiting all these poor communities in Africa as one of the wealthiest people in the world. To me, this is a fascinating contrast that I wanted to hear more about. How can you listen to and interact with people who have nothing, when you have so much? She acknowledges that she is rich and privileged. That is my problem. Rich and privileged is not the same as being one of the wealthiest human beings in the history of civilization. I was distracted and wanted to hear more about how she reconciles this. Granted, the book is about the women the foundation is helping but when it is filled with so many personal anecdotes, to me, this question begs answering.

What an inspiring book, it makes me want to throw money at the Gates Foundation and all the other organizations that Melinda mentions in the book. Alongside anecdotes about her own background, career and the Gates family life (Bill drove his daughter to school, which gave lots of other mothers leverage to pressure their men to do the same) the book looks at the many ways girls and women around the world are still exploited and abused. From family planning, to health access, lack of education, genital mutilation, child brides and the cost of unpaid labor, Gates tells of her travels and explains the lessons that learned while working at her foundation. A main lesson is that when you try to fix injustices and inequalities, it's important to always find the root cause, instead of focusing on the symptoms. And a root cause (e.g. ingrained traditions) can't be fixed with money, it takes empathy and time, to truly change the minds of people. The book is full of inspiring stories of female empowerment heroes and initiatives. All showing, how when we empower and lift up women, everyone profits.

Some of the origanization mentioned:
BRAC - http://www.brac.net/
CARE - http://www.care.org/our-work
Girls Not Brides - http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/
Kakenya's Dream - http://www.kakenyasdream.org/
Malala Fund - http://www.malala.org/
PRADAN - http://www.pradan.net/
Saksham - http://www.community.org.in/story
Tostan - http://www.tostan.org/

Book #6 of 2020 – The moment of lift by Melinda Gates

4 out of 5 stars.

The moment of lift documents the philanthropic work done by the Melinda Gates and Bill Gates foundation. Through this foundation Melinda has travelled to work in several different countries worldwide in order to help improve women's lives through empowerment. The book showed me how little I know about these situations and the incredible work done by the foundation to help improve things.

It was an excellent listen, Melinda Gates is an extremely engaging narrator. I also learnt quite a bit about the situation in America and found myself understanding the growth of feminism in our current times. I would definitely recommend this book.