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Think, For A Moment, About Our Educational Ladder. We've Strengthened The Steps Lifting Students From Elementary School To Junior High, And Those From Junior High To High School. But, That Critical Step Taking Students From High School Into Adulthood Is Badly Broken. And It Can No Longer Support The Weight It Must Bear.

-Melinda Gates

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Think, For A Moment,

Melinda Gates

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Think, For A Moment, About Our Educational Ladder. We've Strengthened The Steps Lifting Students From Elementary School To Junior High, And Those From Junior High To High School. But, That Critical Step Taking Students From High School Into Adulthood Is Badly Broken. And It Can No Longer Support The Weight It Must Bear.

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Make Sure You Continue To Trust What You Know Now About Yourself And Stay True To What You Believe In

If You Want To Lift Up An Economy In Africa, You Basically Start With The Women.

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.

In Different Places You Run Into Myths Around Vaccination Or Around Family Planning. In The United States, One Of The Myths That Existed For A Long Time, That Has Been Completely Debunked, Was That Autism Was Linked To A Vaccine.

Think, For A Moment, About Our Educational Ladder. We've Strengthened The Steps Lifting Students From Elementary School To Junior High, And Those From Junior High To High School. But, That Critical Step Taking Students From High School Into Adulthood Is Badly Broken. And It Can No Longer Support The Weight It Must Bear.

I'm Constantly Saying To Myself, 'i'm Lucky I Was Born In The United States.

We Also Look At Farming. Are We Making Sure That We're Getting The Latest Seeds Out To Women So They Can Get A Bigger Yield Off Of Their Farms? A New Type Of Seed That Gets Out To A Man, Let's Say, That's Drought Resistant - Because, Of Course, The Rains Are Changing In Africa With Climate Change - If You Don't Put It In The Hands Of A Woman, She Won't Necessarily Get It. We Look At Breaking Down All Those Barriers.

I Went To Business School, And I Went Straight From That To A Nine-year Career At Microsoft. Eventually, I Ran A Big Chunk Of The Consumer Products Division For Microsoft.then I Left With The Birth Of Our First Daughter Because Bill And I Both Wanted To Have A Few Kids.

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.

If We Don't Empower Women, We Don't Allow Them To Unlock The Potential Of Themselves And Their Children.

Empowering Women

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.

I Am Inspired By The Women I Meet Everywhere I Go. They Have To Work So Hard Just To Make Sure Their Families Survive, But Somehow They Stay Optimistic And Do Everything In Their Power To Make The Future Better Than The Past.

Despite The Debunking, You Have A Small Group In The Last Five Years That Hasn't Wanted To Vaccinate Their Children, For Instance, For Measles. Then, All Of Sudden, We Got An Outbreak Of Measles And Kids Were Starting To Die From Measles.

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.

I've Travelled Extensively In The Last 16 Years - To Slums In Bangladesh, To Townships In South Africa, To All Kinds Of Places In India, Etc. When I Would Go And Talk To Villagers About Something Like Vaccines, If I Stayed Long Enough, The Women Would Bring The Conversation Around And Say: "what About This Family Planning Tool? We Can't Keep Having The Number Of Children We're Having."

When We Invest In Women And Girls, We Are Investing In The People Who Invest In Everyone Else.

Kids Are Falling Through The Cracks And Nobody Notices It. That To Me Is What's Wrong With The School System.

Men Make Different Investments Than Women Do. Women Tend To Invest More Of Their Earnings Than Men Do In Their Family's Well-being - As Much As 10 Times More.

I Felt Suicidal. I Couldn't Stop Crying. I Remember Thinking, Wouldn't It Be Great If The Car Crashed And I Died?

Women Around The World Should Have A Tool That Helps Them Plan Their Pregnancies.

If You Can't Travel To The Developing World, Look At Helping To Fund A Woman With A Small Loan And Follow Her. Learn Her Story. Learn About The Difference That You're Making.

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?'

When Were You Born, Who Are Your Parents, Where Did You Grow Up? None Of Us Earns These Things. These Things Were Given To Us. So When We Strip Away All Of Our Luck And Our Privilege, And We Consider Where We'd Be Without Them, It Becomes Much Easier To See Someone Who's Poor And Say, "that Could Be Me." And That's Empathy.

When We Invest In Women, We Invest In A Powerful Source Of Global Development

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.

If You Invest In A Girl Or A Woman, You Are Investing In Everybody Else.

I'm Wholehearted About Whatever I Do.

If You Don't Invest In The Woman, Empower Her, Give Her The Things She Needs To Lift Her Family Up, You're Just Not Going To Make The Progress That You Want To Make. But If You Put Her At The Centre, You Can Change A Lot For That Family, And It Has Ripple Effects Through The Economy.

What Great Changes Have Not Been Ambitious?

Even In Our Own Agriculture Strategy, If We Got A Great New Drought-resistant Seed And We Managed To Get It Distributed In The System, We Just Assumed That It Would Reach Female Farmers. That's A False Assumption, Because Women Don't Interact With Agro-dealers. So If You Don't Develop Specific Programming To Ensure That Seed Gets In A Woman's Hands, Then The Extra Income [generated By Higher-yielding Crops] Goes Into Her Husband's Hands.

I Am Catholic, I Was Raised Catholic, I Am A Practicing Catholic. But I Say We Need To Agree To Disagree. We Have A Shared Mission Around Poverty, And I Focus On That, Because We Do A Lot With The Catholic Church Around Poverty Alleviation. I'm Always Looking For: What Is The Common Thread? What Do We Care About? What Do We Believe In? We Believe In Women Around The World. We Believe In All Lives Have Equal Value.

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.

Childbearing, I Mean, If There's No Place To Go To Deliver Your Baby, Then You're The One That's Delivering In Those Unhealthy Circumstances. Or If You Can't Get Access To Family Planning, Your Chances Of Surviving And Being Able To Bring Your Kids Up If They Come One Right After The Other, That Locks You Into A Cycle Of Poverty.

If You Look Back At History, [dale ] Carnegie Highlighted The Need For Libraries To Be A Place Where Everyone Could Go To Read If You Didn't Have Access To Books. Philanthropy Can Be A Place That'll Take A Risk Or Point To Areas To Make Sure They Are The Right Government Investments To Reduce Inequalities.

Take Time To Learn About The Lives Of Women Around The World-and Try To Play A Small Part In Their Fight To Create The Future They Deserve.

Any Social Or Cultural Change Has To Be Made Openly And With People Agreeing. You Don't Get There By Just Pushing An Outsider's Point Of View.

I'm Happy We Have Three Healthy Children And We'll Stay With Three Healthy Children.

Helping People Doesn't Have To Be An Unsound Financial Strategy.

When Girls Are Educated And Free To Pursue Their Passions, They Contribute More To A Thriving Society. When Women Have A Voice, They Raise It To Demand A Life That Is Greater Than What They've Been Told They Have A Right To Expect. And These Demands Change The Future For Everyone.

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.

If You Ask, Who Has The Chance To Move Into The City And Get A Good Job Out In The Developing World? It's A Man. Who's Left To Care For The Kids Back At Home? The Woman Is.

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.

You Can't Save Kids Just With Vaccines.

When We Better Understand The Realities Of These Women's Lives, We Are Able To Design And Deliver Solutions That Are More Useful To Them.

Poverty Disproportionately Affects Women Around The World.

Around The World

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.

In The United States, There's Definitely Some Controversy About Birth Control In General, And I Think We Needed To Split The Debate And Have People Realize That We Actually Agree As A Country About Contraceptives. Over 93 Percent Of American Women Say They Use Contraceptives, And They Feel Very Good About It.

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.

Women Speaking Up For Themselves And For Those Around Them Is The Strongest Force We Have To Change The World.

One Life Is Worth No More Or Less Than Any Other

Philanthropy Is Not About The Money. It's About Using Whatever Resources You Have At Your Fingertips And Applying Them To Improving The World.

Around The World We Have Girls In Primary School At About The Same Rate Now As Boys, But Keeping Them In Quality Secondary Schools Is Where The World Is Lagging. I'm Seeing A Lot Of Countries Look At This Now.

My Background Was Computer Science And Business School, So Eventually I Worked My Way Up Where I Was Running Product Groups - Development, Testing, Marketing, User Education.

We Have To Be Careful In How We Use This Light Shined On Us.

With Economic Opportunity, Sometimes It's Making Sure That If They're Not In A Place Where They Can Have Good Jobs, That When They Have Economic Opportunity, They Have Digital Tools To Use.

All Women, Everywhere, Have The Same Hopes: We Want To Be Self-sufficient And Create Better Lives For Ourselves And Our Loved Ones.

Human-centered Design. Meeting People Where They Are And Really Taking Their Needs And Feedback Into Account. When You Let People Participate In The Design Process, You Find That They Often Have Ingenious Ideas About What Would Really Help Them. And It’s Not A Onetime Thing; It’s An Iterative Process.

The Premise Of This Foundation Is One Life On This Planet Is No More Valuable Than The Next.

Now, As Smartphones Are Coming Up, There Are All Kinds Of Apps That Will Start To Be Developed That Will Help Women.

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.

All Lives Have An Equal Value.

As A Woman Finds Economic Opportunity, Even If She's Only Earning A Couple Of Dollars A Day, If She Can Save It On Her Phone, She Then Makes Different Decisions For Her Household Than Her Husband Might.

Sanitation Issues In The Developing World Affect Women More Than They Affect Men.

You Are Indebted To Life Until You Help Some Less Fortunate Person, Just As You Were Helped.

Empowering Women

Inspirational Women

Connect Deeply With Others. Our Humanity Is The One Thing That We All Have In Common.

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.

Abortion Has Become A Very Politicised Issue That I Think Countries Have To Work Out Themselves. In A Lot Of Countries, People Can't Even Yet Agree On What Their Laws Should Be.

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.

Vaccines Are A Miracle Cure. Eight Out Of 10 Children Are Getting Vaccines.

In The Developing World, They Don't Have Smartphones Yet. They Have The Older Plastic Phones, But Women Are Saving Money On Those, Because They Don't Have Access To Banks. Having That Access To Digital Money Changes Everything For Her Because She Actually Doesn't Have To Negotiate With Her Husband, Which She Will Tell You Is Very Hard In These Circumstances, Especially When The Means Are Meager. She's Expected To Have Money To Pay For The Kids' Health Or To Help With The School Fees.

My Undergraduate Work Was In Computer Science And Economics. It Just Happened To Be At That Time When 34 Percent Of Computer-science Majors Were Women. We Didn't Realize It Was At The Peak At The Time.

Sometimes It's The People You Can't Help Who Inspire You The Most.

Today Is International Women's Day, And There's A Fantastic Set Of Pieces Running By An Organization Called One Called "poverty Is Sexist." It's A Great Way To Quickly Learn About What's Actually Going On For Women In Poverty Around The World, And Then Do Something About It.

[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.

Our Desire To Bring Every Good Thing To Our Children Is A Force For Good Throughout The World. It’s What Propels Societies Forward.

All Of A Sudden People In The United States Start To Realize That Vaccines Make A Difference. The Controversy And The Myth That's There, We're Always Trying To Bust Through That. So When I See A Disease Outbreak, I Say To Myself, "ok, That'll Get People Realizing How Lucky We Are To Have Vaccines."

It's Really One Of My All-time Favorite Things To Do. To Go Out And Really See The Kids And Visit The Moms Who Are In These Programs Because I Think I Really Get To See What Happens On The Ground And Connect With Them About What Changes Are That Happen In Their Lives Because Of Some Of The Giving That We're Able To Do.

In Places Like India With Smartphones, There's An App Now For Women If They're In A Violent Situation, They Can Press One Button. They've Given Their Cell-phone Number To Five Trusted Friends, And Right Away Their Gps Location Goes Out: "here I Am."

The Fact That 98 Percent Of Women In [the U.s.] Who Are Sexually Experienced Say They Use Birth Control Doesn't Make Sex Any Less Sacred. It Just Means That They're Getting To Make Choices About Their Lives.

Housework Comes First, So Girls Often Fall Behind In School. Global Statistics Show That It's Increasingly Girls, Not Boys, Who Don't Know How To Read.

When I Look At 225 Million Women Who Want Contraceptives, And Then I Look At The 52 Million Unintended Pregnancies That Could Be Avoided By Addressing This Unmet Need, Where Can We Have The Biggest Impact With Our Voice, Our Dollars, Our Partners? It's On Contraceptives. I Would Rather Address The Problem Upstream.

Mothers Might Say They'd Go To The Doctor. In Poor Countries, Moms Are Usually Responsible For Their Kids' Health. But Breastfeeding And Traveling To The Clinic Take Time, And Research Shows That Health Care Is One Of The First Tradeoffs Women Make When They're Too Busy.

Now We Just Really Need To Do The Work, Which We're Doing, To Get Contraceptives Out To Women Worldwide.

As A Parent, The Responsible Thing To Do - If You Love Your Child - Is To Vaccinate Your Child.

I Realized That The Only Way To Get Into A Good College Was To Be Valedictorian Or Salutatorian. So That Was My Goal.

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.

Women And Girls Should Be Able To Determine Their Own Future, No Matter Where They're Born.

Having Children Made Us Look Differently At All These Things That We Take For Granted, Like Taking Your Child To Get A Vaccine Against Measles Or Polio.

The Biggest Killers Of Children Around The World Are Two Things: Diarrhea And Pneumonia. When You Think About It, In The United States, Kids Don't Die Of Diarrhea Anymore, But It's A Huge Problem In The Developing World.

A Woman With A Voice Is By Definition A Strong Woman. But The Search To Find That Voice Can Be Remarkably Difficult.

Independent Women

It Is Still Just Unbelievable To Us That Diarrhea Is One Of The Leading Causes Of Child Deaths In The World.

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.

We Started Our Foundation Because We Believe We Have A Real Opportunity To Help Advance Equity Around The World, To Help Make Sure That, No Matter Where A Person Is Born, He Or She Has The Chance To Live A Healthy, Productive Life.

Microsoft Certainly Makes Products For The Macintosh.

If I Really Believe All Lives Have Equal Value, And If I Use Contraceptives, Which I Do, And If I'm Counselling My Son And My Two Daughters To Use Them, How Am I Not Serving The Women Who Don't Have Access To The Contraceptives They Need?

We Set Out What's Going To Be Our Work Time Versus Our Foundation Time Versus Family Time, And We'll Reassess That... Sometimes Every Week.

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.

I Care Much More About Saving The Lives Of Mothers And Babies Than I Do About A Fancy Museum Somewhere.

Government Funding That's Coming From The United States Is Making A Huge Difference On The Ground In The Developing World. It's Really Palpable - It's Making A Huge Difference Saving Lives.

After A Number Of Years Dating, We Decided We Were Good Partners.

The Biggest Pieces Of Work That We Do Are Vaccines, Because Those Save Lives, And Also Family Planning. Because If A Woman Can Space The Births Of Her Children, It Changes Everything For Her Health And Her Child's Health.

I Think It's Very Important That We Instill In Our Kids That It Has Nothing To Do With Their Name Or Their Situation That They're Growing Up In; It Has To Do With Who They Are As An Individual.

Our Economies Are Built On The Backs Of All This Unpaid Labor That Women Do.

We [with Bill Gates] Started To Make Decisions About What We'd Invest In. Then I Actually Started Traveling For The Foundation. I've Probably Been To India Now Eight Times At Least And Africa Numerous Times.

If You Don't Have An Effective Teacher In Front Of The Classroom, You Won't Change The Trajectory For Students.

I Learn In A Different Way. I Learn Experientially.

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.

But Ipods And Iphones Are Two Things We Don't Get For Our Kids.

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.

Bill And I Both Firmly Believe That Even The Most Difficult Global Health Problems Can Be Solved.

Women And Girls Face A Whole Host Of Issues. We Start With Health, So We Work Very Deeply On Maternal Deaths, Making Sure That A Mom Doesn't Die In Childbirth, Making Sure That She Has Access, For Instance, To Aids Medication.

Everyone Agrees That The Failure Of Our High Schools Is Tragic. It's Bad Business, And It's Bad Policy. But We Act As If It Can't Be Helped. It Can Be Helped. We Designed These High Schools; We Can Redesign Them.

It's Important To Remember That Behind Every Data Point Is A Daughter, A Mother, A Sister—a Person With Hopes And Dreams.

We Start With An Economic Approach. We Look At What Are The Greatest Causes Of Death In The Developing World, And What Causes The Largest Amount Of Disability, Which Would Prevent You From Getting A Job. A Lot Of Those Deaths Start With Diseases, Diseases We Don't Get In Such A Great Number In The United States.

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