Melinda Gates: Breaking down barriers

My hopes and dreams for my daughters are exactly the same as my son, which is I hope that they can do whatever they choose to do with their talents out in the world. It's definitely sad to think about, hey, will my daughters run into barriers that my son won't just because of their gender? So when I was on book tour, I met with some young girls who were in a fantastic public school and being told that they could do anything they wanted with their futures and they're on a good path in this school. But I also know the barriers in my mind that they're going to hit and that just shouldn't be. We need to dismantle that so they can thrive and help us change society. And then I was in Chicago and I met with a group of women at an incubator that was trying to help them with their tech ideas and hearing all the barriers these very bright women were up against from funding to bias and the ideas they had were so fantastic for changing things in their communities or in society at large. Those conversations make me realize that we can't keep launching girls and young women into society the way we are today and assuming they're going to be okay. We need to do more on this topic. We've got to accelerate this change. We've got to come together and make sure that their future changes and changes now. 208 years to me is just way too long to wait. I think we need women at seats of every single table because we create a better society, we create more diverse products, we change things for the better. My mother did not get encouraging messages at home about going to college. Luckily when I was growing up my parents were both absolutely determined that my sister and I and my two brothers would all four go to college. They saw the opportunity it had created in their lives by my father being able to go to college and I was just this summer speaking with many of my nieces and my oldest daughter about the difference Title IX has made, the number of women in sport these days, and how it is then changing women in the workplace, but how that isn't yet enough. So many of those barriers still for women and that's why we need to create the right policy changes, the right workplace changes, the right media story changes so that we can truly create equality for everyone.