The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Change comes when men see the benefits of women’s power—not just what women can do that men cannot, but a quality of relationship that comes in an equal partnership that cannot come in a hierarchical relationship: a sense of bonding, of belonging, of community, solidarity, and wholeness born of a promise that I will help you when your burdens are h

“To be known without being loved is terrifying. To be loved without being known has no power to change us. But to be deeply known and deeply loved transforms us.”

A huge part of what made an equal partnership appealing to Bill is that it’s a much more fun and challenging way of being in the world. In the end, though, I think Bill was meant for an equal partnership because it aligns with his deepest values. Early in our work together, we realized that there was an underlying ethos to our philanthropy: the pre

Poverty is created by barriers; we have to get around or break down those barriers to deliver solutions. But that’s not all. The more I saw our work in the field, the more I realized that delivery needs to shape strategy. The challenge of delivery reveals the causes of poverty. You learn why people are poor. You don’t have to guess what the barrier

The judge who convicted Margaret Sanger said that women did not have “the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.” Really? Why? That judge, who sentenced Sanger to thirty days in a workhouse, was expressing the widespread view that a woman’s sexual activity was immoral if it was separated from her fu

When social norms help everyone prosper, they have natural support because they’re in people’s self-interest. But when norms protect the power of certain groups or forbid or deny things that are a natural part of human experience, the norms can’t stand on their own; they have to be enforced by some sanction or stigma.

That’s what it means to be poor. They’re on the margins. They’re not getting the benefit of what human beings know how to do for each other.

Overcoming the need to create outsiders is our greatest challenge as human beings. It is the key to ending deep inequality.

To fight poverty, we have to see and study the barriers and figure out if they’re cultural, or social, or economic, or geographic, or political, and then go around them or through them so the poor aren’t cut off from benefits others enjoy.