Melinda Gates Quotes
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Birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global health agenda, and the victims of this paralysis are the people of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
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Women are the centre of the family. It's the woman who decides what's eaten in the house, when to have the kids vaccinated; everything that has to do with the children's health revolves around her.
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I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal.
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Deep human connection is ... the purpose and the result of a meaningful life - and it will inspire the most amazing acts of love, generosity, and humanity.
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A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.
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Kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what's wrong with the school system.
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If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.
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The world is full of what seem like intractable problems. Often we let that paralyze us. Instead, let is spur you to action. There are some people in the world that we can't help, but there are so many more that we can. So when you see a mother and her children suffering in another part of the world, don't look away. Look right at them. Let them break your heart, then let your empathy and your talents help you make a difference in the lives of others. Whether you volunteer every week or just a few times a year, your time and unique skills are invaluable.
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Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That's the place that governments often don't want to, or can't, work.
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If you can't go to secondary school, the boys get to go and the girls don't, you're locked into a cycle of poverty, because you don't have a chance.
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We have to look at it country by country. In places like the developing world where, as you say, in Mumbai, it's about five hours' gap between what a woman does and a man does. You have to start by recognizing the problem and talking about it, trying to change those roles.
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In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.
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I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.
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Like in Africa, if somebody doesn't have fuel, they're still going and collecting firewood. If they get an oven, that's a huge difference. You can do things to reduce the inequities by making sure that they can get clean energy, safe energy. To make sure they're not having to collect water every day. That's huge for women in the developing world.
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Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward.
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Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant, but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision-makers. When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend. They invest in the long-term human capital of their families.
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If we're going to make progress on this issue [of contraception], we have to be really clear about what our agenda is. We're not talking about abortion. We're not talking about population control. What I'm talking about is giving women the power to save their lives, to save their children's lives and to give their families the best possible future.
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Now we just really need to do the work, which we're doing, to get contraceptives out to women worldwide.
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We also ought to recognize that unpaid labor falls predominantly to women. The other thing I would do in countries like the U.S. is to show more men, even in TV ads, doing household work. Only two percent of ads show men doing chores, and yet we know they actually do several hours of it in real life. Those images affect young boys and girls.
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But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids.
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I think the Americans need to understand that a lot of times the children are bored in school, and that is why they are not staying in.
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We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?'
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[Bill Gates] wanted me to stay working at Microsoft, but I didn't think he could be CEO and we could have the family life that we both had growing up, which is what we envisioned. I knew I would go back to work at some point later to some profession. I just didn't know what.
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After a number of years dating, we decided we were good partners.
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Even in decision-making, we work in self-help groups. That is women coming together in small groups of 10 to sometimes 15 women, where they start to get education about their rights, about clean water and sanitation, about how to have a healthy birth. You can bring in all kinds of education to them that way.
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You can have the best vaccines for a woman or her child, but if you can't get her to come and get them then they won't work.
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When I studied computer science at Duke University in the first half of the 1980s, I had professors who treated women differently than men. I kind of got used to it. At Microsoft, I had to use my elbows and make sure I spoke up at the table, but it was an incredibly meritocratic place. Outside, in the industry, I would feel the sexism. I'd walk into a room and until I proved my worth, everyone would assume that the guy presenting with me had credibility and I didn't.
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That's universal - we all want to bring every good thing to our children. But what's not universal is our ability to provide every good thing.
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I felt suicidal. I couldn't stop crying. I remember thinking, wouldn't it be great if the car crashed and I died?
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Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.
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