Melinda Gates is donating $1B to speed up gender equity in America
Some of the money will fund women's advancement in tech industry careers.
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Melinda Gates visits San Francisco in May to promote her new book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.
Melinda Gates on Wednesday said she's donating $1 billion over the next 10 years to the cause of expanding gender equality in the US.
Gates' investment firm Pivotal Ventures will give money to partners focusing on three priorities: dismantling the barriers to women's professional advancement, fast-tracking women in sectors like tech and government, and encouraging shareholders, consumers, and employees to ramp up pressure on organizations that need to do better.
Part of the push for Gates, who is also co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is that gender equality in the US has been "chronically underfunded," she wrote in a story published in Time. For every dollar private donors give to women's issues, they give $9.27 to higher education and $4.85 to the arts, according to data from Candid's Foundation Directory Online, which Gates cited in her story. Further, 90 cents of every dollar donors spend on women goes to reproductive health, not other needs, she added.
"I want to see more women in the position to make decisions, control resources, and shape policies and perspectives," Gates wrote in the story. "I believe that women's potential is worth investing in -- and the people and organizations working to improve women's lives are, too."
For more, check out Gates' interview with CNET about gender equity in the US.
