Melinda French Gates discusses increasing economic empowerment for women

Consider this. In at least 93 countries, it's legally acceptable to pay women less for doing the exact same job as a man. That's just one of a litany of examples where women's economic equality is denied. And these inequities impact not just women, but their children, their families, and their broader communities. The UN estimates that closing the gender gap, not just in pay, but in other ways, such as giving them more access to loans and capital, could give the global economy a $7 trillion jumpstart. These issues are top of mind for many this week, as world leaders gather in Washington, D.C., for meetings hosted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. One person advocating for a more just economy is Melinda French-Gates. She's the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a funder of the NewsHour. Melinda Gates, welcome back to the NewsHour. So nice to have you here. Thanks for having me, William. So I mentioned this one fact about the, it's okay legally to pay women less than men. But again, that's just one example of so many. When you are here trying to convince people about this inequity existing and causing harms, what do you argue? I'm arguing for, let's fix the system. And to be honest, it's not that hard. If you look at high-income countries, we don't have it all right yet, but women are doing better in our country than in many others. You're not immune to this. We're not immune to this. But if you think back in our history, it was early 1970s that a woman finally didn't need her husband to sign on her bank account in our country. So if we get the regulations right in other countries and we move capital, this large-scale capital that goes from the World Bank or the IMF, but we really hook it up to the women entrepreneurs, there are literally millions of female entrepreneurs across the continent of Africa, and we make sure the loans are right size, the interest rate is paid monthly, not weekly. It isn't an exorbitant fee. These women will actually grow not just their business, but their entire economy. And those disparities that you're describing, those are what exist today? Yes, they still exist in many countries. A woman can't get a loan without her husband signing off on it. So we need to fix those laws, but we also need to fix credit. Right now, a woman often doesn't have a credit score in Africa. She doesn't have the collateral to prove she's credit-worthy. And yet, if we can get her on a mobile bank account, which many women are getting onto, we can start to see that she's paying bills, she's actually financially very literate, and that she can build credit, and we can help her then get a small loan to not only educate her kids, but advance the business she cares about. So you're here talking to the World Bank and the IMF and the heads of these very large international banking structures. When you make this argument to them, are they nodding along with you? Are they looking skeptical at you? Do they appreciate what you're talking about? I would say it's only been in about the last eight years that the world and these large financial institutions have woken up to the opportunity that women present. If I look back 15 years when I used to come to these institutions or to the UN, we didn't really talk about women. But now, people realize, take the United States. Women have the most purchasing power of anybody in our own country. And so they start to see the opportunity, but they have to get their whole organization moving in that direction. How do you explain that chasm, the disparity that exists? Again, we understand some of the societal forces at work here that we've been fighting against for generations. How do you explain that around the world? Well, it's much the same. It's the social norms. For better or for worse, we set the world up for males. And what's happening now is that females, when you send them out into the workforce or to capitalize their small business, they run up against these systemic barriers. So a man doesn't understand their business if he's the one that's gonna extend the credit or he's gonna give the loan, right? They don't see the business. They don't understand it. They often have bias thinking, oh, a woman can't run a business. So we have to break down those barriers so that we show and we demonstrate that women can create society the way we want it and that we can, as investors, get a good return. And then I think you'll see vast amounts of money flow. The good investment, a good return on investment that always seems to be key when you're talking to bankers. That's right. And it should be, right? We expect in our investments to have a return. But sometimes also in the financing, for instance, these large global institutions we're talking about, you have to both do some grant funding and the loan piece because we know India is a perfect example. They put their many women in these self-help groups and now they are lending to 42 million women-led businesses because they're seeing it's advancing the Indian economy. But there had to be grant making at the beginning to get women organized and have the mentorship and the sponsorship to then be able to know how to start their business. I imagine there's also this suite of other complicating factors too. War, conflict, political unrest, climate change, that again, we know disproportionately falls hardest on women and that you also have to be trying to ameliorate those things to create the conditions by which women can thrive. Absolutely. And it's particularly difficult at the meetings right now because we've been talking about climate change. Conflict is rife. But what we're trying to get the high-income countries to understand is you have to also continue these investments in Africa and across the continent of Africa and Southeast Asia because countries want to move from low to middle to high income. And we know it's possible. Peru has done it. India has done it. South Korea used to be a recipient of aid. Now they give aid. And so if we keep making these investments, you will see peace and prosperity in those places as opposed to more conflict. You touched on this before, but I know you're here trying to cajole bankers and the World Bank and the IMF to do better. Some of this, as you mentioned, is also pushing back on societal, cultural, oftentimes religious beliefs about the role that women should and ought to play in societies. That seems like that's a much tougher stream to swim against. Those issues are tough to swim against. Even in our own country, right, we're seeing the rollback of women's rights and health. And so when I look at those issues, I say we need to get more women, for instance, in our country in the 7,000 seats in the state houses and in Congress and in the Senate because women have a different lens on society and they will make different policy. In countries around the world, much is the same thing. Some, they're trying to get more women into their parliaments because they create different policies. They see what is often unseen. They see the unpaid work women do. They see the caregiving burden of they need to care for the children and run the business. And so I think getting women into all those seats of power really will change society. Are there examples that you point to if someone expresses skepticism about moving this rock up this huge hill that you say, look at X, it's proof of concept? Well, at large scale, I say, look at India. India really has gotten their mobile phone penetration out there. They've gotten people ID'd on their phone. People have bank accounts. It's not just men, but they've looked at the gender gap and they're trying to get more women with their own bank account. They're now scaling and getting resources out to women and they're starting to see, they're on the economic rise in a huge way. So I point to them as a large scale example of how and where this can work. Melinda French Gates, thank you so much for being here. Great to see you. Thanks for having me.