Philanthropy Is A Catalyst To Fix Inequality Gap, Says Melinda Gates 

Well so for me moment of lift. I grew up in a family in Dallas, Texas, and my dad was an Apollo engineer on the Apollo missions and it was when we would go watch that rocket launching and the Earth would be shaking and the rocket was rumbling and it finally pushed against the forces of gravity and went to the moon. To me that’s the same thing I’ve seen with 20 years of work through the Foundation for Women that if we can help lift up all women, we will change the world.

Now we have assets of about $50 billion.

That’s essentially what Warren’s plan was that his wife Susie was very involved in philanthropy and his plan had been to give it away through the foundation that he and she had but she passed away early unexpectedly. And then, he came and surprised us by saying that the vast majority would go through our foundation and then three that his children had and the Susan T Buffett Foundation.

I can honestly tell you that Bill and I took a walk after that discussion and we were alone and we both cried. And I think we cried because to know Warren’s generosity and that we would be able to do even so much more than we were already doing for people around the world. It was just unbelievably touching moment and touching moment of friendship.

Bill was 100 percent supportive of this decision and he knew that I had learned so much in the developing world from talking to women. He knew I’d looked at the data. I looked at where we didn’t have data and I was able to talk to him about and he knew this is the greatest anti-poverty tool we have. And if you make sure that women have access all over the world. 200 million women were asking the world to have this tool, and we weren’t delivering it as a world.

So I knew when I decided to take this on it that the reason we weren’t delivering it was political controversy in our own country and religious issues. It was a difficult decision for me because of my Catholic roots and I am still Catholic. But when I met so many women around the world and they would discuss with me that this was literally a life and death crisis for them as a mom. They would say if I have another baby too soon, I’ll die in childbirth or I have five children. It’s not fair to my last child or the others to have another one when I can’t feed them. I had to wrestle with my Catholic faith and say what do I believe in. I believe in saving lives. And this was the right thing to do.

More than once. I learned from Warren’s wife Susie as she told me early to go in anonymously so I’ll go in to many rural settings as a woman from the West with Khaki pants and a T-shirt . I’ll give an example-I was in northern India and I visited a health clinic. So I went into a village talked to a woman and by the time I was finished speaking with her, I asked her. Her name was Mina. What hope do you have? And she looked down for a long time. She cast her eyes down. I thought ‘Oh no I’ve asked something inappropriate’. And she finally looked up at me and she said the truth is I have no hope. I have no hope for feeding this child or that one or educating them. Please take them home with you.

And when that happens it was not the first time it had happened to me. It is heartbreaking to see a woman who loves her clearly loves her sons that much but to know they would be better off going home with a stranger. That’s heartbreaking. And that’s the story of women. Of many women and families around the world.

The idea for the annual letter came from Warren. and Bill and I both thought that was a really good idea. However, we had three very young children at the time and I was on several boards and working at the Foundation as an executive.

I said Bill. I don’t have time to put pen to paper. Bill said that’s okay and started doing it. And so Bill started writing it and he did a great job. But he got very used to writing it alone. So when this contraceptive initiative that I was leading came out I told him I really want write about this in the annual letter. And he felt like the annual letter was going quite well from his perspective.

So we had some difficult discussions at home and I finally wrote a sidebar in the annual letter. The next year we discussed it again before pen was put to paper. And I wrote a about a third of the annual letter. And the next year we had another discussion and I wrote half and now I always write half of the annual letter.We have to sometimes have those uncomfortable conversations. Bill and I believe in equality. But did we really have it in our voice. Not yet. And so we’ve worked on that systematically over time and now I can tell you my husband is a hundred percent committed to making sure I have my voice fully in the world.

Sure. I think every marriage does. And I think I believe in marriage you should have a little bit of healthy grist because that’s how you move forward.

Well actually the first place I thought I wanted to go was Notre Dame because many of my girlfriends and high school’s dads had gone there. But when I went my dad and I went to visit Notre Dame. They were phasing out computer science. They thought it was a fad. I knew I wanted to study computer science in college. Then I saw Duke they just had a big grant from IBM to great computer labs and I said this is where I’m going.

Yes. So at the time I was in college. The late 1980s we had about 37 percent of college undergrads in computer science were women. So we were on our way up. We thought like law and medicine and that has since dropped down to about 17 or 18 percent. Now it’s on a slight uptick to 19 percent. We don’t actually know why women have dropped out of computer science but there’s some theories looking at the data we do have.

Personal computers where really promoted to boys as a home-gaming device and women and girls said I’m out. And then it became this self-referential circle.

So I actually first met Bill three weeks into my job. I had never been to New York City . I had never hailed a cab. My female roommate asked me to come for dinner after my business was done. Came from across town sat down at a dinner. There were two chairs open because I came late from this meeting that I was at and I sat down next chair was empty. Ten minutes later, Bill came in sat down next to me and so that’s when I first met Bill about three weeks into the job.

He didn’t say that then. He sort of said a bunch of us are go out dancing tonight. Why don’t you come. And I said Well I actually have some other plans from somebody I knew from business school tonight.

Then back at Microsoft a few months later. Everybody back then used to work late on Friday nights quite late on and Saturday you’d work to about three or four o’clock. And so my car was parked next to his in a parking lot and he struck up a conversation and we talked for a while then he said he asked me if I would go out with him eventually. This was Saturday two weeks from Friday night and I said two weeks from Friday night I was 22 years old.

You know I was like I have no idea what I’m doing two weeks from Friday night. I said that’s not quite spontaneous enough for me. And he asked for my phone number. He did call me about an hour later at my apartment and said Is this spontaneous enough for you? How about tonight. But then he said but I have a user group meeting and a dinner I have to go to. So how about a glass of wine downtown. I thought a user group meeting on a Saturday night. But I agreed to meet him for a glass of wine. That was our first date.

Yes. So the first date with Bill I thought I would go with him once maybe twice. And I just thought well he would be interesting. Obviously he is running this company that’s doing all these amazing things in the world. Then when I realized we were going to start dating more after the first two dates I thought this is tricky and I’m not sure I want to do this because I worked really hard. I mean computer science to get my MBA I studied economics and I thought this. I’m not sure this is going to go well for me.

And I remember talking to my parents on the phone particularly my mom. She’s like this is not a good idea. And I said Yeah. But he’s really interesting and he actually has a big heart that I think a lot of people don’t see and I don’t know why I’ve sort of gotten to see that side of him. And so what I decided to do was that I would data but I made it known in the company I didn’t try to hide it and I made it incredibly clear to the teams that I was managing that I had these very bright lines and that I did not go home from Microsoft and talk to Bill about work because I’m preparing teams to go into meetings with senior leadership including Bill and they’re nervous. And I’m having to prepare them prepare myself. And the last thing I could do is go home and talk to him. They had to know I had their they’re back in the meeting.

What I know to be true is that Bill and Warren, and I believe that we should not have this inequity that exists in the United States. We need to do something about that. But we are lucky. I meet so many people around the world who would like to live in our country, who would like to live in our democracy and our capitalistic system. But we do have gaps in it, and we need to do things to fix those gaps. The thing that Bill and I try to be most cognizant of is what’s the role of philanthropy. All philanthropy can be is that catalytic wedge.

We can try things, we can experiment with our own money—where you wouldn’t want a government to experiment with taxpayer money. But then we have to prove it out and then it’s up to government to scale up. We feel that philanthropy, with government, with a private sector, with a non-governmental organization and that set of partnerships, and that ecosystem can do the best for the world.

First of all, we are incredibly privileged and lucky to have the resources we have from Microsoft. We do give up some privacy by having that, but I have to say that most people are incredibly respectful. Seattle is a lovely place to live. Bill grew up there. The people who come up—it’s more because they’re proud of what he’s built with Microsoft, and that’s being carried on, or what we’re doing with the foundation. We try to look at those. I try to look at those as moments of grace. And we try to be out in the world. Bill and I still love to go out to movies. We like to go out to restaurants.

It was actually a really sweet moment. We were looking for an extension cord, which wasn’t the easiest thing to find. But when Bill goes into a store like that— it’s like he’s in a big laboratory. He’s just curious about everything. Janet and I kept having to drag him and say, “Come on! We’ve got to find the extension cord. Stay focused!” And he mostly wasn’t recognized until we got in the cashier’s line. But you know he just plays along with it and it’s fine.

I have tried with our children to always have them know that they are loved. Most importantly, they are loved—no matter what. And their job in life is to find their talents, and whatever those talents are, we will support that. And it is up to them to bring those talents in the world, no matter what they want to be.

I also, when the children were young, had always taken them out. First in the Seattle community, even when they were kindergarten age. And then at age appropriate times, when they got to be about 10 or 11, out into the developing world—to not only do a beautiful safari but to actually see what life is like on the ground.

The last thing I will say is because when you have great means you don’t have money as a buffer. My kids have always had an allowance and we’ve always had an agreement. They’re not allowed to tell other people their allowance. Neither am I because some people would say “that’s all the Gates kids get?” Another person would say “Whoa! That’s too much money that they get in a week.” But since they were young, they’ve always had an allowance that grew over time. And when they wanted something, they either had to use their allowance to buy it or put it on their wish list for Christmas and hope their grandparents or we would give it. And if they had something they saw in a store they just had to have, I’d say, well just because I can doesn’t mean that I should.

The reason I even write a page in the book about having been in an abusive relationship is that I want people to know it can happen to anyone. It silences your voice. It is a way of silencing a woman’s voice in a marriage, or in her workplace, or her community. And for me I lost my self-confidence.

And millions of women are being either harassed or abused in all kinds of places. And again, it silences women. We have to talk about this barrier, and we have to lift it up. And what we can do is collect data about it. The world doesn’t actually collect data on abuse and then we can go in and name it, and recognize it, and all commit to changing it everywhere in the world.