The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates

Author : Melinda Gates
Title : The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
Published : 2019
Publisher : Blue Bird
Pages : 288
Genre : Autobiography

     For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women down. In this moving and compelling book, Melinda shares lessons she's learned from the inspiring people she's met during her work and travels around the world. As she writes in the introduction, "That is why I had to write this book - to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live."

     This was a book I didn't come to lightly, it is a subject that not only I something I hold dear to my self but also one that should concern everyone. The plight of women worldwide is a cause we should all get behind. But as we keep seeing time and again it is something that is pushed to the sideline. For half the worlds population it is routine to be seen as second class citizen. For many of you reading this review, this will not be a surprise.   It is something that is deeply worrying, and yet our governments simply won't do anything about it. Yet time and again we see the benefit of raising women up to possessions of authority. In doing so everyone benefits and the standards of living of everyone is brought up.  

     In her journeys around the world Gates shows us that simply sitting down and listening can make the greatest of differences. Her words come across as genuine and heartfelt. She is someone I have come to believe feels in her very bones that in doing the smallest of acts can make the biggest of differences. I suppose we tend to believe that those who have a great deal of money no longer feel the need to worry about anyone else. But for Gates, she stands head and tall in the world of philanthropy. Until I sat down and read this book most of the things she has done I would never have known about. So is this book just a matter of her showing the world look how great I am. This book is more about telling us this is what is going on in the world. This is what needs to be done and you can help too. 

     To say there are moments within this book that are heartbreaking would be an understatement. To read about these women's lives makes me appreciate my life so much more. I to often take what I have for granted. And I realize that is totally on me. Without books like this maybe we don't open our eyes enough to how our world is shaped. It is a book that shines a light on those topics which will never feature on the nightly news. For her, part Gates gives us the easiest way possible into such topics.  Her topics flow seamlessly between subjects that are of great importance and her personal anecdotes as to how she came to each of them.  

     In reading this story I was brought to such emotions, a great deal of which were linked to anger. For a lot of women access to simple basic needs are that of a dream. This is however not just a book of dark stories. We get to see that some people are out there trying to make a difference. Be it through pushing money in the right direction or supplying the very basics of human living. It is not something that can be done blindly. Gates shows that the most powerful tool in her arsenal is to simply sit and listen. Because let's be honest who knows bet than them. I cannot recommend this book enough, I read it in one sitting and will now show it to the people in my life.