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273 pages, Hardcover
First published April 23, 2019
"It's the mark of a backward society - or a society moving backward - when decisions are made for women by men."
"Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise. It will take courage and insight, because the people we push to the margins are the ones who trigger in us the feelings we're afraid of."
"The most radical approach to resistance is acceptance--and acceptance does not mean accepting the world as it is. It means accepting our pain as it is. If we refuse to accept our pain, then we're just trying to make ourselves feel better--and when our hidden motive is to make ourselves to feel better, there is no limit to the damage we can do in the name of justice."
“I soon saw that if we are going to take our place as equals with men, it won’t come from winning our rights one by one or step by step; we’ll win our rights in waves as we become empowered…If you want to lift up humanity, empower women.”Gates wonders how she could have missed these two insights early in her foundation work, and I did, too, considering this was something Hillary Clinton hammered pretty hard during her years as First Lady and Secretary of State. Both Gates and Clinton had international reach and the massive resources to understand exactly where the latch was to unleash potential and creativity. Why Gates never mentions Clinton is a mystery, unless she is trying assiduously to avoid any political fallout. That can't be right, though, as Gates is pretty fearless weighing in on religious issues.
“Bias against women is perhaps humanity’s oldest prejudice, and not only are religions our oldest institutions, but they change more slowly and grudgingly than all the others—which means they hold on to their biases and blind spots longer.”When she is wrapping up, Gates shares something that will help all of us in this country as we struggle through the next period, trying to avoid the dangers of political and ideological attacks (from within!) on our constitution and on our future development and ability to face the existential dangers of climate change. She gives examples of women who have brought peace to warring factions in their country and says
”Many social movements are driven by the same combination—strong activism and the ability to take pain without passing it on. Anyone who can combine those two finds a voice with a moral force.”This, I submit, could be the very key to unlocking the potential of our future. Conservatives complain relentlessly about the yapping left. Essentially, I agree. We have to stop going to the least common denominator.
“Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise.The Left is in agreement with the Right that every member of society must contribute something. No one wants to think they do not contribute. It is up to us to find ways for everyone to do so. And to those who insist they “got where they did by themselves,” well, go live by yourself. Praise your great wealth by looking in the mirror.
"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."
If you want to lift up humanity, empower women.
It is the most comprehensive, pervasive, high-leverage investment you can make in human beings.
... sometimes all that’s needed to lift women up is to stop pulling them down.
As women gain rights, families flourish, and so do societies. That connection is built on a simple truth: 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. Women's rights and society's health and wealth rise together.
If you don't understand the meanings and beliefs behind a community's practices, you won't present your idea in the context of their values and concerns, and people won't hear you.
"I think male dominance is harmful to society because any dominance is harmful: It means society is governed by a false hierarchy where power and opportunity are awarded according to gender, age, wealth, and privilege—not according to skill, effort, talent, or accomplishments. When a culture of dominance is broken, it activates power in all of us. So the goal for me is not the rise of women and the fall of man. It is the rise of both women and men from a struggle for dominance to a state of partnership. (149)"Amen.
". . . sometimes all that's needed to lift women up is to stop pulling them down. (2)"
". . . when women get information, tools, funding, and a sense of our power, women lift off and take the group where they want it to go. (25)"
"Countries that are dominated by men suffer not only because they don't use the talent of their women but because they are run by men who have a need to exclude. (26)"
"The challenge of delivery [of help] reveals the causes of poverty. You learn why people are poor. You don't have to guess what the barriers are. As soon as you try to deliver help, you run into them. (49)" [Contemplate then the correlation and effect of making all kinds of services—i.e., family planning healthcare—unavailable by moving it out of a community where people lack the funds to travel to where it is.]
"Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality. We stigmatize and send to the margins people who trigger in us the feelings we want to avoid. (52)"
"I've come to learn that stigma is always an effort to suppress someone's voice. It forces people to hide in shame. The best way to fight back is to speak up—to say openly the very thing that others stigmatize. It's a direct attack on the self-censorship that stigma needs to survive. (79)"
"An abusive culture, to me, is any culture that needs to single out and exclude a group. It's always a less productive culture because the organization's energy is diverted from lifting people up to keeping people down. It's like an autoimmune disease, where the body sees its own organs as threats and begins attacking them. (221)"
"When people see the effects of poor nurture and call it nature, they discourage the training of women for key positions, and that strengthens the view that the disparity is due to biology. What makes the biology assertion so insidious is that it sabotages the development of women, and it relieves men of any responsibility for examining their motives and practices. That's how gender bias 'plants the evidence' that leads some people to see the effects of their own bias and call it biology. And that perpetuates a culture that women don't want to join. (222)"
"Gender and racial diversity is essential for a healthy society. When one group marginalizes others and decides on its own what will be pursued and prioritized, its decisions will reflect its values, its mindsets, and its blind spots. (225)" [This is followed by absolutely harrowing facts about computer code that is written by predominantly white people, thereby codifying bias because it programs all AI to not recognize faces of people who look different—this has ramifications in every area of life and, if it weren't true, it would make a great dystopian horror film.]
[In talking about how a violence prevention program to protect sex workers in India worked,] "Ashok Alexander, then head of our India office, put it bluntly, 'Every man who's a bully is scared of a group of women.'"
"Many successful social movements are driven by the same combination—strong activism and the ability to take pain without passing it on. Anyone who can combine those two finds a voice with a moral force. (256)"
[When] "we see ourselves as others. That is the moment of lift. (264)"