Investing in women empowers society

Growing up in the United States, I always knew I wanted to have a career in computer science.

It was not an obvious future for me because, in the 1970s, I didn’t know many women who worked outside the home. But I was lucky. I had a mother who encouraged me to be anything I wanted to be—and a father who insisted that being a girl should never limit my dreams.

With my parents’ help, I earned degrees in computer science and business and spent a decade as a software executive at Microsoft. But their support didn’t just turn me into a computer scientist.

It also taught me what it means to be an advocate for women and girls. And through my parents’ example, I also learnt the value of giving back to society from an early age.

Now, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, I’m trying to put these lessons into practice to help unlock the potential of women and girls around the world. Over the past decade and a half, I travelled a great deal and met a great number of people from all walks of life. It is the best part of the job - hearing their stories, being invited into their homes and learning about their lives.

It’s why I am so excited about my visit to Kenya to see for myself the work that the foundation and partners are doing. It’s a chance to hear first-hand the stories of the individuals whose lives have changed for the better – and, in turn, are improving the lives of their families and strengthening their communities. By many measures, there has never been a better time to be born a girl. The data tells us that in virtually every country, women are living longer, healthier, better lives than ever before. But it also confirms there is a long way to go to reach true gender equality.

Women and girls still learn less, earn less, and have far fewer opportunities. And that’s bad news for all of us no matter what our gender. When girls can reach their full potential, everyone benefits, including boys and men.

Investing in women and girls isn’t only the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing. It saves lives, makes families more prosperous, and builds stronger economies.

That’s because women invest the majority of every dollar they make back into their families and prioritise the household budget for healthcare, nutritious food, and education—the building blocks of thriving societies.

When a woman can decide, for example, whether and when to get pregnant, both she and her family are healthier and her children are more likely to break out of poverty. Improving access to voluntary family planning enables girls to stay longer in education, could prevent 30 per cent or more of maternal deaths and halve the number of newborn deaths.

So it is a major barrier to progress that there are still 225 million girls and women in the world without access to any form of modern contraceptives.

This is why the international community came together four years ago at a global summit, co-hosted by the foundation, to pledge that 120 million more women and girls would have access to contraceptives by 2020.

At the half-way point, globally, more women and girls than ever before are using modern contraception. But the latest data show that to fulfill our promise to 120 million girls we need to act now and accelerate progress. I am determined to play my part in closing the gap.

That is why I make trips regularly to learn and hear directly from beneficiaries and from those who are driving impact where the work is happening. Strong government leadership is key to success. The Government of Kenya, for example, has long recognised family planning is a key driver of development, and has demonstrated its strong commitment to working with broader civil society to expand access to more women. As a result, the percentage of women and couples using modern contraception has increased significantly in recent years.

While progress on the whole is positive, more needs to be done—in Kenya and beyond—to ensure it’s more equitable.

Poor women in urban settings, for example, are often left behind. Thanks to initiatives like the Tupange Urban Reproductive Health initiative in Kenya, we can point to solutions, such as innovative radio programmes, television adverts, educating local religious and youth leaders, and bringing private sector supply chain solutions to the public sector to ensure more women benefit.

This is progress we should build on, because equitable access to health services like family planning benefits everyone.

I like to call myself an impatient optimist. I know progress is possible because we see it happening all around us. But what’s urgently needed now is for us all to work together to speed it up.