Moment of Lift : How Empowering Women Changes the World

How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings—and especially for women? Because when you lift up women, you lift up humanity.

Great schools don’t just teach you; they change you

you wanted to bring down the number of newborn deaths, Uttar Pradesh was an important place to work.

—Saksham cut newborn mortality in half in eighteen months.

Poverty is not being able to protect your family. Poverty is not being able to save your children when mothers with more money could. And because the strongest instinct of a mother is to protect her children, poverty is the most disempowering force on earth.

Whenever you include a group that’s been excluded, you benefit everyone. And when you’re working globally to include

Some of the best ideas in development are simple ideas—after you’ve heard them. But it takes a visionary to dream them up and make them work

When women can decide whether and when to have children; when women can decide whether and when and whom to marry; when women have access to healthcare, do only our fair share of unpaid labor, get the education we want, make the financial decisions we need, are treated with respect at work, enjoy the same rights as men, and rise up with the help of other women and men who train us in leadership and sponsor us for high positions—then women flourish … and our families and communities flourish with us.

The correlation is as nearly perfect as any you will find in the world of data. If you search for poverty, you will find women who don’t have power. If you explore prosperity, you will find women who do have power and use it.

Whenever you include a group that’s been excluded, you benefit everyone. And when you’re working globally to include women and girls, who are half of every population, you’re working to benefit all members of every community. Gender equity lifts everyone.