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

I came across this book on Bill Gates summer reading list. I know, I know, what you are thinking, I thought the same and that’s precisely the reason I picked up the book, with a ready smirk that I am going to speed read and then rip the book apart (at least in my mind). Another negative thing going for the book was, that I was picking it up right after Becoming by Michelle Obama and I had already loved her story.

Question: So, how did it stack up against all these negative prejudices?  
Answer: Brilliantly

How? Read on….

The basic idea of the book is very simple yet very profound, lift up the women and you will solve problems that you didn’t even know existed. Topics like Children’s nutrition, immunization, health is obviously related to women of the house. But then, Melinda talk’s about how Productivity in agriculture and even containing the AIDS epidemics are dependent on women empowerment.

Melinda talks about her journey with the foundation in great detail, where her work started with contraceptives and she tells that story beautifully. It’s scary when I was forced to think of it all, most of us, have never even questioned our right to decide the number of kids we want to have, and the gap between them. Her stories exposed me to lots of communities, where mothers are having kids as they don’t have a choice to say "No". These mothers don’t have the money to feed and clothe their kids, forget vaccinate. It’s heart-wrenching to hear these stories.

One revelation that came to me was, that once I see a problem, my automatic trigger is to look for a solution. I also tend to think about these solutions very linearly. So, I now have made a mental note to try and understand the many moving parts to a problem before I look to solve them. In fact, I am more likely to solve the problem for good if I look at it in its entirety.

The story that is etched in my brain was an explanation of “Poverty through the eyes of Poor” by Hans Rosling.

When Hans was a young doctor, he and his wife moved to Mozambique. He practiced medicine in a poor region, where he was the only doctor for 300,000 people. They were all his patients, even though he barely saw them. His district had 15,000 births a year and more than 3,000 deaths. So, every day in his district, 10 children died.

One day Hans drove into a remote village to treat Cholera, as people didn’t have the means to come to him.  As soon as he stepped out, people began saying,” Doutor Comprido” which means Doctor Tall in Portuguese.
So, Hans asked them, “How do you all know me?”    
People replied,” Oh, you are very well known in this village”
Hans was further confused as he had never come to this village earlier. Finally, the story rolls as follows.

A woman who had a problem with childbirth went to the hospital to be treated by Hans. The child was coming out hand first and already dead when she reached the hospital. Hans had to cut the child into pieces and take him out. C-section wasn’t an option as Hans wasn’t set for surgery. During this process, the mother’s uterus ruptured and she bled out on the table.

Once he recollected the birth details, Hans got a bit worried and started apologizing to the people in the village. However, the villagers continued with the chants of how great he was, as he covered the dead body of the mother and child in a white sheet and sent it back to the village in a vaccination jeep. The villagers continued enthusiastically that after that tragedy, she was back home the same day and the family could have a funeral that evening. They continued to say that we never expected anyone to show such respect to us poor farmers.

That’s when Hans said he witnessed poverty, it isn’t living on a dollar a day. It was taking days to get to the nearest hospital when you are dying, it was respecting a doctor for not saving a life but for retuning a dead body to the village.  

The book is full of nuanced stories like this. If this interests you, will suggest read it.