What is the main message of The Moment of Lift?

The main message of The Moment of Lift is empowering women as a catalyst for global progress.

How long does it take to read The Moment of Lift?

The reading time for The Moment of Lift varies. However, the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of The Moment of Lift?

The author of The Moment of Lift is Melinda Gates.

Society & Culture

The Moment of Lift Book Summary - The Moment of Lift Book explained in key points

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The Moment of Lift summary

Name: The Moment of Lift
Rating: 4.2 (97 reviews)
Author: Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates

How Empowering Women Changes the World

4.2 (97 ratings)

22 mins

Brief summary

'The Moment of Lift' by Melinda Gates is an insightful read on the importance of gender equality in achieving a better world. Gates shares stories and solutions to empower women and girls globally, highlighting the ripple effect on societies and economies.

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Gender & Sexuality

Table of Contents

The Moment of Lift
Summary of 7 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 7

What’s in it for me? Uncover how empowering women is key to making the world a better place.

Gender equality has taken its rightful position as a major social issue in our world. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, problems that women all over the globe face on a regular basis have been placed front and center in media and social discourses. Whether it’s sexual harassment or the gender pay gap, discussions on gender equality and how it can be achieved are now more widespread than ever.

But while many of these discussions revolve around women’s rights in developed countries, less focus has been placed on the plight of women struggling through poverty in the developing world. While poverty creates unbearable hardships for all those it afflicts, women are disproportionately made to bear its burden.

In the blinks ahead, you’ll be led on a journey of personal discovery that the author experienced in her capacity leading one of the world’s largest charitable foundations. This journey has involved discovering the interlinked hardships that women go through on a regular basis. And while her foundation and others have gained a lot of ground, there is still a long way to go.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how contraceptives ended up being the most empowering tool for women ever invented;
why hundreds of millions of women don’t go to secondary school; and
how empowering female farmers could lift 150 million people out of food poverty.

Access to family planning lies at the heart of women’s empowerment.

After founding the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, the author and her husband made it their mission to widen access to healthcare and reduce poverty around the world. One of the areas on which they have focused is providing free vaccinations to children in developing nations.

During a visit to one of the foundation’s vaccination drives in Malawi, Africa, the author had countless conversations with women who’d brought their children long distances to get vaccinated. However, there was a theme other than vaccinations that often came up during these conversations. Many of the women were very concerned about a different kind of medication – female contraception. Many complained that even if their children were vaccinated, what would it matter? If impoverished women were destined to continue having more and more children, how would they be able to provide for their families?

These women’s concerns correlate directly to the available data on the subject. In 2012, for example, 260 million women were using contraceptives in the world’s 69 least wealthy nations. But in the same nations, more than 200 million women wanted to use contraceptives – but didn’t have access to them.

The benefits of increasing access to contraception are clear. For example, in an ongoing Bangladeshi study dating from the 1970s, half of the women in a grouping of villages were provided contraceptives, and the other half not. Two decades after the study began, the mothers who were provided contraceptives were healthier, as were their children. Additionally, their families were better off, and their children were more likely to go to school.

These benefits stem from the fact that if women are allowed to choose when to become pregnant, they can better plan their careers and education. They can also better raise the children they already have, meaning that the next generation is more likely to be better off. For poorer families, contraception often contributes to breaking vicious cycles of poverty.

All over the world, access to contraceptives is helping to empower women and their families. This is even true in the United States, where the Affordable Care Act has allowed women access to free contraceptives. The ACA and similar legislation have resulted in a 30-year low for unintended pregnancy.

Unfortunately, the current administration is attempting to undo much of this progress by reversing legislation, reducing funding for family planning organizations and promoting abstinence-only sex education. This is not a step in the right direction, as contraception is arguably the most important innovation in history for empowering women.

Understanding the relationship between poverty and reproductive health is key to empowering women.

Since 1990, the global vaccination drive, in which the author’s foundation ended up participating, cut the number of childhood deaths from lack of vaccinations in half. Unfortunately, the same success story cannot be said about worldwide infant mortality rates. In fact, almost half of children who lose their lives under the age of five die within a month of being born. All in all, 3 million newborns die every year, with most cases occurring in remote, impoverished areas where hospitals are far away and medical professionals lacking.

The author and her husband decided they wanted to do something about this. In 2003, as a part of their global drive to reduce infant mortality, they established a partnership with an Indian team that was training community health workers. They then sent them to work in impoverished communities such as Shivgarh, a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, India’s second-poorest state where 300,000 newborn deaths occur every year.

Increasing access to all levels of education for women is of paramount importance.

Gary, a foundation colleague, was running workshops on family planning in Kanpur, India, where the impoverished residents were members of one of the lowest castes. Their livelihoods revolved around sorting through trash to find valuables to sell. This meant that Kanpur resembled a garbage dump.

While the locals were grateful for Gary’s insight on family planning, a ten-year-old local girl named Sona asked him if the foundation could also provide her with a teacher. Girls like Sona made the author realize that no matter how much contraception is available to women, impoverished communities won’t be able to break the cycle of poverty. Without proper schooling, girls like Sona will end up sorting through garbage like her parents, and the cycle will continue.

The burden of unpaid work often holds women back from pursuing their dreams.

Even educated women continue to face countless hurdles in the world of work. But this doesn’t only mean in traditional workplaces – the gender imbalances in unpaid work are just as much of an injustice as the gender wage gap.

Whether it’s childcare, cooking or carrying out errands, unpaid labor is carried out by women more than men. The data reflects such disparities clearly. In India, for example, women engage in six hours of unpaid work on a daily basis, whereas for men that number reduces to one. Even in the United States, women partake in four hours of unpaid work on average but men in only two-and-a-half.

One of the most disempowering phenomena holding women back is child marriage.

At a dinner hosted by Dutch Princess Mabel van Oranje, the author became aware of how the horrors of child marriage tied in closely with her foundation’s pursuits in family planning and newborn and maternal health. She learned that child brides are the least likely group of girls to use contraceptives. What she was even more horrified to find out is that the number one cause of death among 15 to 19 year-old-girls is going through childbirth.

Child brides are a widespread phenomenon. In 2012, an estimated 14 million child marriages occurred, and a third of girls in emerging economies were married before turning 18. What’s more shocking is that almost 10 percent were married before turning 15.

Women are being held back in the world of agriculture, and the consequences are dire.

While most people in developed countries rely on supermarkets for food, the situation is quite different elsewhere. Not only are hundreds of millions of people growing food for their survival but data also shows that 70 percent of the poorest people in the world farm small plots of land to sell food to make ends meet.

The author’s foundation has been addressing the problems faced by this 70 percent for over a decade. By widening access to better seeds and holding workshops on more efficient farming techniques, they have made inroads into reducing malnutrition and poverty.

Diverse workplaces don’t just empower women – they create more empathic and united societies.

As the author spent the majority of her career at Microsoft, she’s directed a lot of her effort to tackling gender inequity in the industry she knows best – tech.

Even though Microsoft has always valued diversity, the ultra-competitive and often aggressive company culture had a very masculine element about it when she worked there in the 1990s. Microsoft has since gone through a cultural shift, in part due to the cultural changes that the author helped engender while leading a team of 1,700 people during her tenure at the company. She encouraged her employees to be honest about their mistakes and express their weaknesses.

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What is The Moment of Lift about?

The Moment of Lift (2019) relates the journey that Melinda Gates embarked upon to help empower women all around the world. Whether through stories of people she met via her charitable work or from experiences recounted by others, this part-memoir, part-call-to-action explores the myriad social and economic issues women and girls face on a daily basis. But while many of these hurdles seem insurmountable, only by overcoming them can humanity as a whole move forward to a more egalitarian and just future.

The Moment of Lift Review

The Moment of Lift (2019) by Melinda Gates is an enlightening book that explores the importance of lifting up women to create a better world. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It presents compelling stories of women from all walks of life, showcasing their resilience and the power of their voices.
With a focus on empowering solutions that address gender inequality, the book provides thought-provoking insights for individuals and organizations.
By sharing personal experiences and lessons learned, Melinda Gates brings authenticity to her message, making the book engaging and impactful.

Who should read The Moment of Lift?

Women who want to learn more about gender issues
Men looking to understand the hardships faced by women
Curious minds interested in the links between poverty, gender and inequality

About the Author

Melinda Gates is a philanthropist, businesswoman and global advocate for women. After rising through the ranks at Microsoft and marrying Bill Gates, she founded and currently co-chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charitable foundation. In addition to its work promoting gender equality, the foundation also focuses on reducing poverty and widening access to healthcare around the world.

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