The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

This is about all the problems faced by women, mostly in the Third World. Unpaid labor, domestic abuse, child marriage, genital cutting, etc.

Fundamentally, the book is about women’s equality, and I commend Gates for revealing considerable details about her marriage to Bill. She goes on for many pages about how they have worked for an equal marriage, and how Bill helps with domestic chores and she has worked to obtain equal footing as the public face of the Foundation.

If the book has a fault, it’s that it’s repetitive. It’s story after story of women that Gates encounters in the Third World. Their problems are acute and important, of course, but they all run together after a while, and, looking back, I can’t really separate one from the other.

Also, the title and the subtitle don’t mention the focus on the Third World. If you’re looking for a book about the empowerment of women in U.S. or European society, this isn’t it.

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