Participant #1:

This week, a reunion is taking place in New York. Over 150 world leaders have
flocked to the Big Apple for the United Nations General Assembly, they'll be rubbing
shoulders in real life this year. It's the first inperson meeting after two years of
coverage related disruption. Ukraine climate change and the energy crisis are all on
the agenda. And so too are the ravages and ramifications of the pandemic.
Coronavirus put the brakes on the UN Sustainable Development Goals in areas such
as health, education and living standards. But for gender equality, progress hasn't just
stalled, it's reversed. In New York this week, CEMA Bahu, the executive director of
UN Women, had a grim assessment of the outlook. We gather, ladies and gentlemen,
at a time when global gender equality and women's rights are in acute danger,
education is not only a critical tool to combat this, it is the means to fundamentally
improve the lives of women, girls, families and whole communities. We must hold
each other accountable for doing so and safeguard our progress.

Participant #1:
This is the economist asks I'm Anne Mclevoy, and this week we're asking, why is
progress on gender equality slowing? It was just seven years ago that each of the 193
UN member states signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals and agreed to try
and achieve them by 2030. My guest thinks it's time to change. TAC. Melinda French
Gates is one of the world's most prominent philanthropists and co chair of the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, which she runs with her exhusband. The foundation has
an endowment of more than $53 billion, which makes it the most powerful charitable
organization globally. If the Gates Foundation were a government, it would be the
12th biggest dispersal of foreign aid between Italy and Switzerland. French Gates has
championed women's equality for decades. So as politicians roll into town for the UN
General Assembly, she'll be calling on them to do more for women. She believes that
is the engine of growth for all. Melinda french gates. Welcome to the Economist asks.
Thanks for having me. You've just published the Gates Foundation Goalkeepers
report. It measures the progress in reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals
set out in 2015, to be achieved by 2030, or at least that was the theory. We're now at
the halfway point, and you're very open about the fact that it isn't going as well as you
anticipated. Why do you think that is? I think none of us could have predicted the
global pandemic that we've all just been through and are still going through, and it
had enormous health shocks, but also economic shocks. And then on top of that, we're
having these conflicts around the world. So we're seeing a setback, unfortunately, in
these goals. And we think it's important to be very transparent about what's going on
and yet say we had seen progress before. It's still possible, but this is the state of the
world. This is where we are today. But as it stands. Now, as you say in the report,
progress would have to be speeded up five times to meet most of these goals. Doesn't
that imply that they were rather optimistic in the first place? Some of the goals were
definitely overly ambitious and some of them were ambitious and some were
reachable, right? And any time you set a goal, you want it to be ambitious, but you
want it to be reachable. The truth is that with the Pandemic health system shut down,
girls left school and haven't gone back, women's lives and livelihoods got crushed and
they got pushed out of the workforce in droves and there was nobody to take care of
the children. So you had these shocks upon shocks upon shocks. And so we are where
we are and it's time to start looking at, OK, what do we do and how do we build back
and start again on this track of progress? And that subject of gender, economic
equality and the pursuit of that is one of your great personal causes. Now, under the
goals as a set out, the aim is to achieve parity around this by 2030, and as you point
out, it wouldn't be met until 2100 and eight. That's a massive gap, isn't it? And I'm
sure you'll see a lot of that comes back down to the impact of the Pandemic. But what
are the other great barriers that you think are standing in the way? Well, I think we
weren't making the right investments or enough investments on gender equity before
we entered the Pandemic. That's the truth. I mean, we have to look at root causes until
we really look and peel back the covers to say what's going on in society after society.
If we don't do that, we will never make the right investments. And so, finally, we are,
as a world, collecting gender data. We didn't even know much before about women's
lives around the world, except what they died of. That is just a sad fact. But now,
finally, we are collecting gender data even in places during the Pandemic. Like the
Kenyan government started to do a time use survey of how are women spending their
time. So we're unearthing all the unpaid labor we expect women to do caring for the
elderly, feeding the children, caring for the children. And until we go at those root
causes, for instance, safe and affordable child care, women can't enter the formal
workforce or they can't keep up their informal sector job, much less start a company.
So we've got to look at these issues and we need to invest in them as a world to pull
down the barriers and then to accelerate women's progress. You say that very
confidently, but how much do we know about what women themselves want? What I
know is that women want to be able to make decisions for themselves. So if a woman
decides that she has the economic means to stay home, fulltime. And that's her choice.
That's a fabulous choice. She ought to take that decision and make that decision for
herself. If she wants to work full time and have children or not have children, she
should be able to make that decision for herself. If she wants to do both, she should
have that decision. But nobody should make the decision for them. And today society
is making the decision for them. Because if a woman chooses to have children and she
would like to work, she doesn't have good childcare options. In most places in the
world, even in my own country, in the United States, the child care sector almost
collapsed during the Pandemic. Women are struggling in my own home city of Seattle
to find child care. So what I know is that women want to reach their full potential and
they want to be able to take decisions for themselves and have the economic means to
do what they want to do in their own family lives. You just returned from Africa this
summer for the first time. You were able to go there since the Pandemic. Visiting
women, I think, in Rwanda and in Senegal. Tell me a bit about the conversations that
you had there about economic freedom and what that meant to the women that you
spoke to and also candidly what they thought was stopping them from getting it. So I
met in Senegal, for instance, with a young woman who had started a business with her
female business partner to collect rubber tires off the streets of Decar, Senegal. So
they're no longer breeding grounds for mosquitoes. They're crushing them up. They're
selling them to cement factories, the grinds. They're selling them to go under soccer
fields. They have so much demand, they can't meet the demand with the supply they
have. But what these women talked about was the same thing I hear from women in
the United States, which is, it's really, really hard to capitalize my business. And so
what I'm hearing is women with all these great business ideas, whether they live in
Europe, they live in the United States, they live in a country in Africa, but less than
4% of venture capital, for instance, goes to a woman led business. And yet we know
women have great ideas for businesses and are great businesswomen. Is there a touch
of selfcriticism here? And I'm wondering if philanthropists, and even the Gates
Foundation itself has been a bit slow on enabling women. Absolutely, they're
selfcriticism. I look back and I say, how did I not know when we started the
foundation in 2000? That when we started our programming. The truth is, we should
have started everything we did and put a gender lens on it. And it took until 2012 and
then 2015 to really say, gosh, if we're going to get the most out of our investments,
just take in malaria. We have hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in
malaria. What the head of the malaria program will tell you is we get more out of our
malaria investments by looking at the gendered piece. Who hangs the bed net in the
family? The woman. Who decides who sleeps under it? The woman. So that was a
blind spot on our part as a set of philanthropists back in 2000, and we have corrected
for it. But to be honest, it took us 15 years to get there. That's a lesson for us. As
philanthropists, you've talked a lot about the burden of care giving on women and
how it affects their ability or their potential to earn money and ultimately control more
of their own lives. And you say in the report, women will never have full economic
power without real caregiving infrastructure. What does that look like? Well, I think it
can look very different in different places, and it can be a whole mix of caregiving
solutions. Right? So I'll give you a great example. Out of Kenya, I met a woman,
Sabrina, and she has started something called Kadogo, and she has basically set up a
franchising model where she has female entrepreneurs who set up these small crashes,
often in the informal settlements, so that women have a safe, affordable place to put
their child. They can go out and work. And guess what? These female entrepreneurs,
they call themselves momopreneurs, set up a business and are making money off of
child care. That is a win win for society. And so I think there's all kinds of ways in a
society to do child care before school, after school, whether the kids are too young to
even be in school. But we've got to look at all forms of that and make sure we support
it and support it well. Despite high level advocacy, progress has been slow. So if I was
to ask you, what are your three most effective policies, what would they be? The three
things I would do are get girls in high quality school and keep them there all the way
through. Number two, I would make sure that every single woman was educated
about her body and had access to long acting contraceptives. And number three, I
would make sure that money gets into women's hands and into a digital bank account.
If you did those three things, you would unlock empowerment around the world. How
did women enter the workforce in Europe, in Peru, in the United States? It was access
to contraceptives. Once they could space the births of their children, and if they chose
to limit them, then they could work and get on their feet economically. You took us
there to contraception. And, of course, that brings us into the more fraught territory of
abortion rights and reproductive rights as they're affected by abortion and the writer or
otherwise to an abortion. Now, the Gates Foundation stopped short of funding
abortion services in the past, and I think you once described it as a political hot potato,
which is quite some understatement, as it turned out, looking at what's happened, of
course, with the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. So would you now make the decision
to become political and start funding abortion services? Well, what I've always said is
that I believe women should be able to take the decision on when and whether to have
children. That is not a government decision. That's a personal, private family decision
that should be made. Now, where I use my resources that I think I can be most
effective, are trying to make sure that the 220,000,000 women who already know
about contraceptives and are asking us for them. So to me, in terms of resourcing,
where can I put millions and millions of dollars down? Most effectively, it's on long
acting contraceptives. And that is what we do through the foundation. Then the other
thing that I do through my company, Pivotal Ventures in the United States is I'm
trying to make sure that we plow far more resources and money into getting female
politicians. Until we have equal number of female and women in positions of power,
we won't make the right policies in our countries, and we aren't. It just sounds to me
like you're sidestepping whether or not you would want to get involved with funding
abortion services or counseling in any way. I don't fund abortion. I do not think
funding is the problem today in the United States. I think policy is the problem in the
United States. And do you feel that America's, I think you've said it's taken a step back
over Roe versus Wade, does that make it feel like a less good place to be a woman? I
think anytime you have a country step back for a law that's been on the books for
women's health, that is absolutely a step back. And yes, I think women feel the crisis
in the United States is why you're seeing women are starting the roles of who's
signing up to vote. We're seeing the numbers skyrocket for women. So we'll see how
women answer that in the midterm elections with labor force participation, there's a
cultural aspect and of course, many tradeoffs. In some ways, your situation is similar
to many of our listeners. You've had to juggle a career with a marriage and with
children. Do you think we quite understand yet how to unite these pressures? And
what's been your own handrail to understand that better? I talked to a lot of families,
men and women, and I think we all have different ideas, but we all want to live our
hopes and our dreams. It's very personal. Inside of a family, do you put one career
before another? Maybe you do that for a while and then you put the other person's
career forward. They're absolutely pressures, and there are tradeoffs. If we have
children, we don't necessarily get to have everything right. I'm still juggling even
though I'm an empty nester. They come in and out of the house. One was home this
summer, and you were making tradeoffs. I make tradeoffs every day about do I work
or do I spend time with my kids and my friends? So I think these are felt, lived
experiences. But I think there are also societal barriers that tell us a woman should do
certain things, and the truth is she doesn't have to do those things. Why should she
have to be the one who puts the meals on the table or cleans up the dishes or does the
laundry? Who decided that last time I spoke to you? I just remembered, actually,
when you said that I remember you told us then that you thought you had to be very
careful with allocation of chores and rolls, everything from who does the dishwasher.
Is that still something that you've thought about? I mean, domestic circumstances
have changed, but some of this remains the same, right? Definitely. And what I see are
young couples. If they choose to be a couple, they're making those decisions before
they enter the marriage and making it thoughtfully. They go online. There are all these
surveys now, and you literally check off who's going to do what, who's going to take
out the trash? So it is in our households, but it's in our communities, it's in our
societies, it's in our social norms. Why would we even assume in a low income
country that a boy goes to school and not a girl? Why is that a fair assumption? It's not
take in a high income country now, you don't really question whether a girl should go
to school or not. It's like girls and boys go to school. We've changed that social norm,
but we've got to relook at a lot of our social norms, and part of it is we don't see
women at the top of society. Once you start to see women at the top of society, you
start to say, I expect there to be more female prime ministers, more female presidents,
more female finance ministers. But until we see it, it's harder to change our minds that
it's possible. I'm getting a strong sense of advocacy around women from you, almost
as if that's something you want to double down on. And you would say when you
announced your divorce from your ex husband, that you would say, as co chair of the
Gates Foundation for, I think, about two year trial period. How is that going? And do
you feel able to do that? There is that sense of you I don't want to say coming out of
your shell. I don't think you ever in a shell. But there is some sense of perhaps a
slightly more autonomous vibe. Am I on the right track? I'm a founder of the
foundation. I'm a trustee of the foundation. My values are baked into the foundation,
and we now have a board. And you know, what I know is that I'm free to do whatever
gender work I want to do inside the foundation. Right. And I know that we will be
better as a foundation if we do that work. And we are better and our partners are
better. So I feel very free to speak my mind, to move resources, to make sure the
board feels comfortable, my other co trustee feels comfortable. We make those
decisions still together as a set of trustees. Do you think it's likely that you will then
stay in perpetuity with the Gates Foundation? I have no plans to do anything
otherwise. The Gates Foundation was renowned for its data driven approach to
philanthropy, much of which was down to your exhusband bill. But it has been noted
recently, including by The Economist, that you've been the driver of a rather different
approach, more holistic, more humanized. Is that because you think philanthropy
became too reliant on data? And what are the merits of this more human led way of
looking at it? I think we need both. And I think if you look back in the field of
philanthropy over 20 years ago, there really, in many areas, wasn't much data. That's
just the truth. I think those data systems have come along. It's how we can measure
progress. But I think there's kind of a middle ground there where the data is only
telling enough. If you understand the human stories behind it. It's the two coming
together. It's the quantitative and the qualitative together that gives you the full picture
of how do we invest in creating change? Because that's really what philanthropy does
with government and civil society and partners, is we are trying to create societal
change, to move society forward for the better. If we were to have you back in another
few years on the show, I think it's been about three years, do you think that we would
have made some progress on gender and economic equality as a result of the light that
you, among others, are shining on it today? I think we will absolutely have made
some progress. I think it will be spotty and in different places. But what I know is, if
we invest in women, they invest in everyone else. So we need to get money in their
hands in safe digital wallets. We need to invest in their businesses. We need to help
them build up credit. We need to make sure there's a childcare system so that they can
actually work and run their business. But I absolutely think I would be back in three
years saying, we have made progress in some places. We'll catch up with you then
again, I hope. Melinda Frenchgate, thank you very much indeed for joining us today.
Thanks for having me. And I'd love to know what you think, apart from that big ticket
philanthropy, what will it really take to move the needle on gender equality? Write to
us at podcast@economist.com or you can tweet us at The Economist. Melinda
frenchgates raised the question of how the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will
influence America's midterm elections. For more on that, have a listen to our sister
podcast, Checks and Balance. The team travels to Michigan to hear from voters in the
state and speaks to a Congresswoman about how the issue is shaping her reelection
race. You'll find that episode wherever you get your podcasts. This week, the
Economist reports from the United Nations General Assembly and takes a look at Joe
Biden's foreign policy performance. You can read our dispatch on our website. And
the best way to enjoy all our journalism is, of course, to become a subscriber. Sign up
today@economists.com podcastoffer, where we have a special introductory rate for
our listeners. The link is in the show notes. My producer is Alicia Burrell. The
bookings producer is Melanie styling condon executive producer is Hannah Moreno.
I'm Anne Mclevoy. And in London. This is the Economist.