Melinda Gates Opens Midwinter with Stories of Empowerment

By Phil Morehart, American Libraries

You are the guardians of our stories. You pass along our stories. And our stories bring us together,” said Melinda Gates during the Opening Session at the 2019 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits in Seattle. Her admiration for libraries is well documented: As co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she has been at the forefront of philanthropic funding for libraries. The Gates Library Foundation (which closed in 2018) provided more than $1 billion to libraries around the world over the course of 21 years. Gates’ dedication to libraries was further cemented when it was revealed at the beginning of her talk that she will serve as honorary chair for National Library Week this year. Gates spoke to ALA Midwinter attendees not as a philanthropist, however, but as an author.

Gates’ new book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World presents raw data and touching anecdotes to demonstrate that women’s prosperity and health are intrinsically linked to the health and prosperity of the world at large. In the book, Gates points out that as women are “lifted up,” the world follows. It is a call to action that shows how to improve women’s lives on the macro and micro level, from ensuring access to education and contraceptives to economic opportunity and equality in marriage.

“Demand for gender equality is growing louder and coming from all over the world,” Gates said. “We all need to step up, even if you’ve never thought of yourself as an advocate. This is the moment of lift.”

Gates was joined by librarian and author Nancy Pearl, who guided their discussion of the book’s stories, which were gathered by Gates on travels throughout the world while working with the foundation. The plights of women she encountered who needed contraceptives and family-planning tools; who experienced inequities at home and in the workplace; or who were denied access to education inspired both the book and Gates’ life’s direction.

“I heard a resounding cry and plea for help,” she said. Gates described multiple stories of women whose lives and families were stunted by lack of access to resources, including a young mother in Africa who tearfully asked Gates to take her newborn child back to the U.S. The woman was afraid that she would be unable to provide her new baby a good life should she get pregnant again. That story and others led Gates and the foundation to raise $2.6 billion to help provide contraceptives to women in need.

The book also provides a rare look into Gates’ personal life and her marriage to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Gates said that she had to be open about her own struggles for full transparency and to show how these issues affect everyone regardless of socioeconomic status or where you live in the world.

“We worked hard to get equality in our marriage,” she said. “We try to live an integrated life. What we’re role modeling to the world, we have to replicate at home.”

Gates shared an anecdote about her family’s morning routine to drive the point home describing that when one of her daughters was enrolled in a new school years ago, she had to add an extra hour to her morning drive to get the girl to school on time. When her husband offered to take over that duty, it alleviated strain on Gates’ already busy schedule and had a ripple effect on others.

She said that other mothers noticed when she stopped driving her daughter to school. Instead they saw one of the world’s richest men doing it. Gates said the women told her that the change inspired the women to tell their own husbands, “‘If Bill Gates can drive his kid to school, you can too.’”

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