Bill and Melinda Gates Make A Big Move For Women's Global Economic Empowerment
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Bill and Melinda Gates Make A Big Move For Women's Global Economic Empowerment
For over a decade, researchers have known that everything changes in almost every community and country worldwide when women have money.
On Monday Melinda Gates published an op-ed in Quartz in which she and husband Bill Gates announced a four-year pledge of $170 million to help empower women economically worldwide.
The decision comes at a time when 1) the Gates Foundation has tried to block the damage levied at poor women worldwide by cuts In the US budget that funds global women's health initiatives -- not abortions, but 'yes' to birth control being available at women's health clinics. Generally-speaking, the Trump administration stands opposed to taxpayer-funded birth control, arguing that it diminishes religious freedoms for those Americans opposed to contraception; and 2) in response to #MeToo stories and the prevalence of sexual harassment and violence against women worldwide.
The money, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will be spent over four years “to help women exercise their economic power,” Melinda Gates wrote. She noted that research shows economic power is the “most promising entry points for gender equality.”
“Simply put when money flows into the hands of women who have the authority to use it, everything changes,” Melinda Gates wrote.
