The Opposition…

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Melinda French Gates

Discussion: 2019-Apr-May-Jun

Why we're reading this: April 24, 2019
[close] April 24, 2019

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Jun 04, 2019 Linda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: chcpl, nonfiction, memoir, economics, hardback, 2019, women

Everyone should read this book. EVERYONE.
Melinda Gates sets thoughtful, wise, and poignant agendas to promote inclusion and dissipate factions in humanity.
She learned that what appeared to be the answers to a problem weren't always appreciated by the people affected who, obviously, knew more about the situation and what was needed. So, she listened and worked at changing programs of assistance to actually benefit someone. (Condoms are not the answer to STDs and childhood poverty if the women wit ...more

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Apr 12, 2020 Andy rated it liked it · review of another edition

I have given this book to young professional women and they have found it very inspiring for the reasons described in the 5-star reviews here on Goodreads. Nevertheless, I was troubled by some aspects of the content.

Philanthropy is not a business. Differentiation from market competitors is not the issue. Innovation may or may not be necessary. The solutions to big problems are often boring and dirt-cheap and decades-old, like polio vaccine, the distribution of which the Gates Foundation has supp I have given this book to young professional women and they have found it very inspiring for the reasons described in the 5-star reviews here on Goodreads. Nevertheless, I was troubled by some aspects of the content.

Philanthropy is not a business. Differentiation from market competitors is not the issue. Innovation may or may not be necessary. The solutions to big problems are often boring and dirt-cheap and decades-old, like polio vaccine, the distribution of which the Gates Foundation has supported by partnering with existing players like Rotary. It would have been good to hear more about lessons from this sort of model as applied to empowering women.

It was a bit much to listen to one of the richest people in the world go on for hours about how she went to talk to heroic poor people in faraway places who revealed to her how to solve their problems. The things she discovers--like female literacy and family planning--she could have read about in a book on evidence-based global health. She could have taken action on these things years earlier.

Moreover, there's very little in this book on the effectiveness of what the Gateses did actually fund in American education or in global health. I think the book would have been much richer with some discussion of these issues. I don't expect Melinda Gates to tear herself apart but it would have been good to at least hear her response to the critiques of the Foundation that have appeared in the business press like Fortune Magazine. To the extent she admits that there has been opposition to her philanthropy, she suggests in Ch. 6 that it's because of her courageous support for human rights, skipping over the failures of some her projects.

In Ch. 8, we're given some insight into her mindset. It's the culture of the software business. "You don’t get promoted until you have had a big flop." “Nothing sharpens my focus like a mistake." "We had to be willing to try stuff, kill things that didn’t work, and try something new." This is the attitude; that it's good to have lots of failures. That might be OK if you’re just spending your shareholders' money, but I would argue it's not OK if you're failing to implement proven practices that could save millions of people today. In Ch. 9, she clarifies further that they see themselves as innovators and don't like to fund dissemination and distribution of proven solutions, including even their own innovations. But she seems to be getting that this is a mistake. ...more

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