The Moment of Lift - Melinda Gates

Reviewer’s Note :

It’s been ages since a book has completely enthralled me. This book subtly awakens the link between women's empowerment and the rampant mentality of societies. It minutely highlights some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to accelerate change. And Melinda provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference. Someone once said,

‘If one man calls out a woman, everyone follows, and her character is put in jeopardy. But if 50 women call a man out for doing something wrong, people have trouble believing it.’

Despite our many attempts and successes, we are still in perilous times with women’s rights, especially when it comes to access to birth control and family-planning clinics. Equal pay is still an issue in several places. And women are still discriminated against and harassed in the workplace. I specifically felt inspired by the hard work of philanthropy at this level, so much of it was about copious amounts of travel, empathy, listening, research, study, and importantly asking the relevant questions to women who were never approached in this manner. In the most subtle but powerful manner, Melinda introduces how empowering women can bring about transformative reforms in the world.

Book Review/Summary:

For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her, ‘If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women down’.

Melinda explains that her public advocacy began with the conviction that women need the tools to let them decide for themselves when and whether to have children. But she soon realized that activism around discrete topics contraception or girls’ access to school—was not enough: She needed to speak up for women. While it has long been understood that empowered women are key to the strength of any community, in this author’s hands, the idea feels fresh and highly energized.

Traveling and talking with women about family planning and contraceptives has laid bare many more of the worst barbarity women face worldwide - Female genital cutting, child marriage, rape, domestic violence, sex work. Melinda’s stories of meeting these women are heart-breaking but necessary, especially for people who are oblivious to these practices. Extreme poverty and isolation are devastating to women and makes it mostly impossible for them to provide for and protect their children. As a result, women continue to live in bleak circumstances.

Even though she confesses she found the idea of working for a wider women’s agenda overwhelming, Melinda is a likable narrator, and she has an eye for gut-wrenching tales. She introduces us to an 11-year-old, who spent a day cheerfully helping her mother prepare for a party only to be told that she was to be married that night; and Meena, who told her she was unable to raise two children and asked Melinda to take the children home with her.

In this compelling book, Melinda shares lessons she’s learned from the inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world. As she writes in the introduction,

“That is why I had to write this book―to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.”

When you begin to understand how the less fortunate live, it does more than giving you the desire to help: it shows you how. If the barrier is distance, money, or orthodox beliefs, we need to follow methods that are less tainted by stigma.

Melinda’s unforgettable narrative is backed by startling data as she presents the issues that most need our attention―from child marriage to lack of access to contraceptives to gender inequity in the workplace. She stresses that saving lives will start with including everyone, especially the women who we’ve pushed to the margins. We must wake up to the ways we exclude women, in decision making - about their own as well as their children’s lives. Every society says that its outsiders are the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Throughout, she shows how there has never been, more opportunity to change the world, and ourselves. History shows the power of group action, but it takes individuals to bring a group into being. The supreme goal of humanity is not competition, but connection and equality. Writing with scrutiny, candor, and grace, Melinda Gates introduces us to remarkable women and shows the power when we end factions and summon a moment of lift to live with harmony.

Happy Reading.