World is nowhere near where it should be on gender equality: Melinda French Gates

Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, says governments need to make the right investments to ensure that women not only have access to good jobs but also childcare. In an interview to TOI, she says it's important to make sure that women are empowered to get into politics, and can help shape policies. Excerpts
Can we now say that Covid-19 is behind us, and it will not pose any fresh challenges to the world?
Covid-19 is a disease that we’ve never seen before.It’s a virus that affects the human body in different ways, and so I don’t think we know that it’s fully over yet. We’re seeing continued strains of it, so we’ll see, as the cold weather really starts to hit the Northern Hemisphere, this fall, where we are as a world.
Do you think that the world has learned its lessons from Covid-19?
The world needs to have a pandemic preparedness system in place. We need to be able to have a strike force that can go in, of a few thousand people, so that as soon as the world sees – we need a good surveillance system. We have parts of the surveillance system around the world, but we need a good surveillance system that detects diseases quickly and early, and so that the whole world knows, and we need a strike force to be able to go in, and we need to be making investments early on in research and development so that we have tools that we can bring to bear very quickly. The world is beginning to invest in those things, but no, we have not invested enough yet—at all—and so that is a message that we are really out there talking to governments about, as a foundation.
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to setbacks in the different sectors, and one of the key issues that you talk about in the Goalkeepers Report is the impact on SDGs ( Sustainable Development Goals). How does the world get back on track to achieve the SDGs?
Yes. So that’s why, this year, Bill and I—in the Goalkeepers
Report—as a foundation, decided to really show exactly where we are. That data tells us that we’ve had major setbacks in the world because of Covid-19, and yet we want people to know that progress is still possible if we make the right investments in innovations. If we make the right investments, there’s huge human potential and ingenuity out there, but it means governments, civil society and the private sector, and we need to bring all of our resources to bear.
Just as you said earlier, I mean, one of the things that I think we are deeply concerned about as a foundation is the setbacks—as you saw in the report—on gender equality. Women, many women lost their livelihoods during COVID 19. So whether during the pandemic, they were in the informal sector, or whether they were in the formal sector, they stepped back from their jobs.
And so governments need to make the right investments. It means making sure that women have not only access to a good job, but that we invest in childcare. If we don’t invest in childcare, a woman can’t go take that great job or start that business that she wants to start.
How do you ensure that women have power and not just empowerment, the point that you make in the report?
Yes. So we have to make sure that women have true economic power. And one of the ways of doing that is to make sure that we put cash in their hands. We saw government after government making these social protection payments during Covid. And when they put them into a digital wallet for a woman, it really led to economic power.
For instance, we saw in Niger—one of the poorest countries in the world—70% of the women went to market and they bought grain for their family. We see in India, where you all have been investing in women’s self-help groups, or some people call them women’s economic collectives, and you’ve been investing in those for quite some time. What we’re working on with the Ministry of Rural Development in your own country is a new system called LOG.OS that really helps with digital recordkeeping and recording of those self-help groups.
What does that do? Well, it means that we can that we can start to actually make it easier for women to record their earnings, but also to then have access to other things like credit. when you start to open up credit for women, or you start to invest in their jobs and give them money so they can start a business, it starts to unlock huge amounts of economic power, not just for them, but for other people they hire and for the whole economy.
How do you see India’s progress on gender equality?
Well, gender equality is an interesting thing, country by country. India has a unique flavour in which women are not really going into the private sector in the same way that you see in other countries. So there’s the downside there.
Now, one of the upsides I see on gender equality in India is this huge potential, and like right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was incredible to see these women’s self-help groups going out in their communities. They were the ones giving the messages about how to protect yourself, make sure that you wear a mask, these are the things that we know that work. You all have the self-help groups that other countries would clamour to have, and so the self-help groups really do help women get on their feet economically.
In fact, one of the things we saw is that the Jameel Poverty Action Lab really started to measure some of the financial accounts that women had control of. Again, what we started to see in India was that, when women had control of their finances, they were 7% more likely to earn an income and they have 30%, higher earnings.
So in India, I think it’s a mixed message, depending on where you live, and what part of the
country you live in, but you know, I go to certain parts of India and I say, “Wow, there are women getting amazing tech sector jobs” ; There are other parts of India where I say, ”Okay, in Northern India, thank goodness, you have self-help groups,”; because it’s helping women start to learn from one another, but we are just not anywhere near—as a world—where we should be on gender equality, no matter what the country is in the world. That’s part of the reason that I wrote the essay I did in the Goalkeepers Report, which is to say, look, Covid set us back on gender equality. We need to make investments.
How do you think the Jan Dhan scheme can be enlarged for financial inclusion and empowering women?
Well, I think we can make sure that it gets to even more women. There are ways we’re seeing in other countries that you program a system like that, so even women who don’t have full literacy can get on it. But I also think it can be expanded. I think you can start to make sure that women have more access to loans, that they get a credit score.
I mean, we need to make sure that if a woman starts a business, that she has access to capital, right, and what I know from women, is they’re ingenious. I’ve seen lots of women have business ideas, but if they don’t get funded, they don’t get off the ground.
So I think a service like that can actually be expanded over time. And what women are proving is that they are credit worthy, that when they get financed, when they get money in their hands, they do spend it in good ways on behalf of their family.
How can countries harness women power for more equitable growth?
I think that we can make sure that we empower women to get into politics, and so making sure that a woman has access to elections and can make sure that they have capital so they can get their voice out there. When we get more women into politics, and get more women in with seats in parliament, they make different policies on behalf of the country.
And so having more female leaders in politics, having more female leaders in business, having more female leaders in finance, more female leaders in media. Media is the one that tells our stories, and so making sure that women start to reach their full potential in each of the key fields, which is important around the world.
What else can be done to bridge the compensation gap between men and women?
Transparency. Data and transparency help. When you force companies to actually publish the data about what they’re paying men versus women, then they start to act in the right way. We know that around the world, and it’s why the foundation is so involved in talking about data, and data transparency. So that’s one thing we can do.
Another thing we can do is make sure that good policies are set so that we really look at childcare, and that countries invest in a good childcare system. Women can’t go and take a job.
Whether they have a job in the informal sector, or whether they have a job in the formal sector, either one, they need to have a place that their child can go that is safe and is affordable. If we don’t look at childcare, women will never be able to take their full place in the economy, and they’ll never be able to earn their full potential.
How can the private sector be convinced about this huge business prospect that you’ve talked about?
Well, I think businesses are often economically driven. They’re driven by their shareholders, but again, we know from good data—even in the United States—that when you have more women with seats at the table—whether it’s a table where product is being created, whether it’s at the board level—we know that those companies actually do better and bring in more income for the company and for the shareholders. So convincing them, “Hey, bring women into your workforce,” ; that’s the right thing, and it’s going to help their business, but to do that, you need the childcare piece.
I was just in Senegal a few months ago, talking to an incredible group of women scientists at a place called Institut Pasteur. And one of the things that they basically are demanding at Institut Pasteur, with these unbelievable female scientists is, “Hey, we want a place to put our children, we need an onsite daycare”; The men actually said, “You know what? We need that too.”
And so I think when you start to see businesses doing the right thing—both to make income—okay, they want women in their businesses, but then putting creches or childcare on site, then you start to see other businesses pattern matching and doing the same thing.
How should governments come together to solve the problem of, maybe if not fully, but at least help these people around the world?
Well, one of the things that we highlight in the Goalkeepers Report is not only do we need to deal with the current hunger emergency, absolutely, but we need to invest in the right systems. We need to make sure that farmers who have very small plots, where they often have a plot that’s a hectare or two across the continent, let’s say in Africa, or even in India, where people have very small plots, if they have access to the right seeds, it helps tremendously.
As the rains come more often and fields are flooded, it’s having a rice seed, for instance, in India that can tolerate that flooding, or having a drought resistant seed for maize or for wheat. When farmers have access to those seeds and to the information – we’ve done this climate – or I should say agriculture adaptation atlas so that farmers can start to understand when are the rains coming, when should we plant, how should we plant differently, what seed, what methodology should we use? Information and those types of innovative seeds really can change what a farmer reaps from their own plot of land. And so investing in a food system and into an agricultural system is vitally important.
How do you see India’s role in solving this global food problem?
Well, India is known for innovation, and you all have done quite a bit on using some of these new seeds, like rice, or it’s being planted, and has been planted now for quite some time, up in the northern part of the country. And so helping other African countries understand that those seeds are available, understand what India has done in planting those seeds at the right time, and how much fertiliser to use.
There are innovations that have come via India, and that have actually been implemented. You all implement things at scale, making sure that those get to Africa. Or the women’s self-help groups, really making sure what’s come out and the learnings from those, as they get constructed in Africa, and how they can benefit women in the right way, all the learnings and the years of doing that in India are something that can really help accelerate women’s a quality across Africa. And if we do the right things in agriculture, lessons from India can really help benefit the food system.