Why Women Still Struggle for Real Power — with Melinda French Gates

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1:29Oh, that was wrong. That was so wrong. Go, go, go!

1:43Welcome to the 345th episode of the PropTube Pod. Everyone is freaking out at that joke. Is this the end? If we're going to go down, let's go down with all guns blazing. All right, what's happening? I am back in London, and it feels alien because the sun is out. It hits 62 degrees today. We have a fantastic episode today We speak with Melinda French Gates A philanthropist, businesswoman, and global advocate for women and girls Probably the wrong joke for that Anyway, as we discuss with Melinda her new book The Next Day, Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward We also get into her philanthropic efforts What she learned from raising a son And why women still face barriers to claiming real power today So with that, here's our conversation with Melinda French Gates

2:44Melinda, where does this podcast find you? In Seattle. Seattle, that would make sense. Yeah, home for me. Home for you. What percentage of your time do you spend there and what's your second favorite place? I'm probably half the time in Seattle and my second favorite place is being with my granddaughter somewhere on the East Coast, New York or Florida. Oh, that's nice. Where in Florida? They're down in the sort of Palm Beach area, but inland from that. Yeah, I have a home in Delray Beach. I really enjoy it down there, and I miss it. So let's bust right into it. In the opening of your new book, The Next Day, you write that you've organized a book around transitions that were formative in your life.

3:24You mentioned leaving home, becoming a parent, losing a friend, ending your marriage, and leaving the Gates Foundation. Walk us through, if you can, each of these pivotal moments and highlight some of the key insights. Well, I wrote this book because I think, you know, we all go through transitions in life. And I'm very honest in the book that I've turned 60. And so by now, I've gone through lots of transitions. As you said, leaving home. For me, that one was really exciting to go to college. But then I got there, and as I describe in the book, I felt like a fish shot of water as a woman in computer science, and I had to adjust to that.

3:59I talk about joining Microsoft. That was, again, a very exciting time in the computer industry. I loved it, but again, there weren't very many technical women. I leave my career to start raising my children, knowing I would go back, but that was an enormous transition for me to leave the workforce and raise children. And then, you know, we started the Gates Foundation, and I chose to leave that last year and strike out on my own in philanthropy. So big, big transitions, some exhilarating, some scary, but I think they're things we learn and we gain resilience by going through lots of transitions.

4:37So obviously you're playing at an entirely different altitude, but my family is blessed with a certain level of economic security and I constantly get questions around, how do you maintain your children's grit? And the answer is, I'm not sure we have. You obviously, your kids, I would imagine this is an issue that you face. How do you try and instill a certain level of values and grit and an appreciation for work in your kids, given obviously the extraordinary opportunities and privilege they have? Sure. And my three children are all now adults, ages 22, 25, and 28. But what I would say is I was incredibly purposeful about it from the day they were born.

5:18And I knew they were being born into a life of incredible privilege. But I grew up in a middle-class family, and I knew that if I could instill those values and make our life as normal as I could for them and constantly live out my values in the home and through the work we were doing in the world and bring the work home and talk about it around the dinner table as well as I took them out on age-appropriate field trips. Even when they were very young, we went and visited places around Seattle that they could give their time. And eventually, when they were old enough, I took them to pretty rough places in Africa so they could see that Seattle was one pinprick on the globe and that if you have some level of wealth and privilege, there is something you can do with your life to give back.

6:09And I believe that's true for everybody who's born in the United States, no matter what their wealth income. You have time and energy and talents and sometimes even money to give back. So in addition to taking them and exposing them to people who aren't less fortunate, did you have any more pedestrian tactics like chores or athletics, anything like that? Absolutely. First of all, I felt like my kids should not be homeschooled. They should be in a school environment so that we were working through all the issues that kids worked through with their peers and that I needed to work through with other parents.

6:46We absolutely had chores. They had an allowance and we had an agreement about their allowance. They got it weekly. it wasn't for specific chores. It was an allowance, but they were expected to do their chores. And the agreement I had with them is that became their budget for buying clothing, for buying things they wanted. Anything else went on their Christmas wish list or their birthday wish list from our extended family. And the other agreement I had with them is because of who we were, neither they nor I were ever allowed to tell how much it was per week because everybody would have an opinion.

7:25Oh, that's all the Gates kids gets or oh my gosh, that's so much money that they get. But I think it taught them to budget early and learn the value of money. One of the things, I think one of the reasons or common themes through the accolades or the positive reception of your book is that you are pretty strikingly vulnerable and raw and out there with pretty sensitive topics. You know, when you read memoirs, quite frankly, you're usually reading kind of the starched version of their life written by someone else. They're the hero in everything and everything's for the better and ends well and there's some life lesson in it and you seem pretty vulnerable in it.

8:04You talk a lot about dealing with panic attacks and anxiety and we are raising a generation of people who are suffering more from anxiety or greater levels of anxiety than any previous generation. You have kids, you struggled or been open about your struggles with anxiety. What advice can you give to young people who might be struggling with anxiety? Pretty much every human being has anxiety at some level. And I know many business leaders that I have been around, I'll say many of them male or even prime ministers. I was practicing backstage for something, and I saw this prime minister going into a Q &A session, and he was practicing with his team because he knew there were going to be anxiety-provoking questions.

8:52And the only reason I even say that is because I think we have to realize all of us deal with it at some level, and the more we can be honest about it and bring it forward and name it and then reach for support and other people and resources, the more we can overcome it. And partly you do have to lean forward into it. I often say to myself in the back of my mind, and I've said this to my three children, both when they were in middle school, high school, and now adults, just when anxiety makes you feel like you want to fall backwards, as soon as you start to feel that falling backwards, you have to push yourself to lean forward and say, what can I do in this moment?

9:36Who can I reach out to on text? How do I reach, you know, a trusted friend, a parent, a therapist, a counselor? And that the more you practice going through those anxious times, the more you're going to get better at it and push through even some of the bigger ones. Yeah, I love the statement of Dan Harris that action absorbs anxiety. And something that gives me anxiety. I don't know if you've ever felt this way as a parent. I have huge fears that I have sons 14 and 17, that they're going through something and don't tell me or anybody. That's my fear, that they're in the room. And I felt the same way.

10:15When I had problems at school, I wasn't going to talk to my mom about it. I was raised by a single mother. I just wasn't going to come to her. And that's always been my biggest fear is that, well, anybody doesn't reach out, but especially with my kids. Like, how do I create some level of comfort or fluidity around communication? Because I do worry that, you know, I would bet the majority of the stuff they've dealt with, I never knew about. And anyway, more of a statement than a question, but any thoughts on trying to make sure that people close in your life reach out when they're struggling? Well, I would say, you know, Scott, you and I grew up in a different generation, right?

10:53And luckily, this generation is talking much more about anxiety, depression, mental health disorders. So that's fantastic. And all I can say is what I tried to do as a parent, I definitely had times when I worried substantially about two of my three children. The third one, not so much because she was so verbal, I kind of always knew what was on her mind, but the older two. And what I learned over that time was the more I could be venerable and name what I I was afraid of or what I dealt with at their age, I think the more it caused an opening for a conversation. I will say I hear from more parents of boys, or I did when my girls and my son were in middle school, high school, that boys tend to not be in general as verbal about naming their emotions, especially because they're maturing a bit later than girls.

11:45And so I think in those cases, you have to create more openings and opportunities. So I learned with two of my three that they would talk over a dinner alone with me, and we just made a regular routine of dinners alone. Another one talked to me more when we would go out walking, so we made a regular routine of going out walking. And guess what? I still employ those tactics now that they're adults. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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14:15You're raising a son. I'm writing a book. on masculinity. And I have two sons, so I can't compare and contrast what it's like to raise girls versus boys. But what have been your observations and how, or if and how, you've changed your approach to parenting between your son and your daughters? Well, first of all, for me, at least, it was more about personality. I mean, kids come into the world with a good chunk of their personality, I think, developed. And we can only, I think, affect what my mom used to say were the two ends of the spectrum, help them, you know, raise up their good sides and try and keep the low sides down.

14:53So my kids, all three were quite different personalities. But I will say, you know, that my son and he and I were just recently talking about this, he matured a bit later than the girls did, you know, at those ages. And so I did have to talk with him more about his friends even later than I talked to my girls. Like, you want to make sure your kids are surrounded by a good community and good friends. And if you see a bad one, you know, in middle school, you get to help them more on that. In high school, you know, it gets trickier, right? And so I did have to have more conversations with my son about, you know, what are you noticing about this friend?

15:31What do you like about this friend? Or what don't you like about that friend? So he could compare and contrast good friendships to be able to really see who was true in his life. So you also talk a lot about how difficult it is still for women to get real power. What do you mean by real power and what still gets in the way? I mean, there's a lot of data showing that women are doing, quite frankly, just really well, right? Women under the more college attendance from women, women under the age of 30 in urban centers are making more money, or single women-owned homes. The graduate schools are chock full of women now, more women seeking tertiary education than men.

16:13But you say that women still have a difficult time seizing real power. Define real power and what you think are still some of the obstacles facing women. Sure. I think we all have power inside of us. Boys and men, women and girls. You're absolutely right at the statistics you've talked about, where women are starting to thrive at those levels. But when we send them out into society, into their careers, there's a noticeable shift and you are not seeing women at the very top of professions. They're starting to make it in middle management. You're seeing more female CFOs and chief legal officers or head of HR.

16:57But how many CEOs in the Fortune 500 are women? How many entrepreneurs are women? How many at the top of the medical profession, how many of those are women? And so what I'm seeing is that women are stalling at certain levels for all kinds of reasons. And partly, though, there are barriers in society that are holding women back. And we need to break down those barriers. Because to me, real power is when a woman can use her voice and advocate exactly the way she wants. She has full decision-making authority, authority over her resources, and she's setting direction. So when I look at who creates our public policy, I still don't see enough women at the head of the Senate or the U.S.

17:45House of Representatives. I don't see enough women in state legislatures. That's where we're making policy. When I look at who are the heads of studios and what movies are being made, those tell our stories. How many female directors do you see? So we're still stalling out in society, and that's why I feel, at least for me, my work is how do we make sure we continue to break down the barriers and lift women up all the way as we also bring along boys? Because you have great statistics, which I've read and I see, and I see it anecdotally, of boys now struggling more at the sort of middle and high school level and college level, right?

18:25So we actually need to do both. So there's just no getting around it. The data I've seen is that while young women are thriving, where women really take a hit professionally, quite frankly, is when they have kids. And that is the corporate world still hasn't figured out a way to maintain a woman's trajectory. And the corporate world is very unforgiving of people who leave for even a year. So I guess moving to, and also, I think it's like 80 or 85 of the Fortune 500. At one point, I think there were more CEOs named John than women, like not that long ago, three or four years ago. So there's clearly, I mean, there's clearly some nuance here.

19:03Clearly, there's still really big obstacles for women around, as you put it, seizing real power. I believe that equality of opportunity doesn't always mean equality of outcome. I'm not sure there would ever be 250 women, Fortune 500 CEOs. And that's a longer conversation as to why. But there should definitely be more than 80. But what can we do? Because is it laws? Is it a different approach? Is it, it doesn't appear, I mean, is it gonna be a naturally occurring phenomena because there's more women in college and college is a strong predictor of senior leadership? Is it that young women aren't as risk aggressive for whatever reason and they need different upbringing about risk and entrepreneurship?

19:44Like if you had a magic wand, you have a lot of resources, you have a big voice. You've identified the problem. What do you think of the two or three things we can do as a society to try and help women at those senior levels get over the hump. Okay, so one of the biggest barriers for women in the workplace is caregiving. Even in the private sector, less than 27 % of women have access to paid family medical leave. We are the only, the only high-income country in the world that doesn't have a federal paid family medical leave policy. And I don't believe it should be maternity leave. I believe it should be paid family medical leave.

20:26Because if you look at societies, take the Nordic countries, where they've had paid family medical leave for a long time, say 30 years, what happens? Both the women and the men take it. And what it does is the man participates longer in the rearing of the children. He appreciates his wife's role more, and you break down the norm in society that, oh, the woman should go take care of the kid, and then there's not also a career penalty for her taking that time off because the man's doing it as well. When we get to that point of really waking up to having a paid family medical leave policy at the federal level, we will change society.

21:11And so one of the things I am doing with many, many partners is pushing on this. We got very close in the last administration. We missed it at the federal level by one vote. It was a senator, a male senator, but we have it in 13 states and the District of Columbia now. And so we've got to keep, that's one barrier we have to break down and keep pushing forward. Again, I believe if you have more women in state houses and you have more women on the Hill in D.C., we'll get that policy passed, but we'll get it passed even before that, because we do have to have like-minded men and boys who believe in these things.

21:47In terms of women, just take, I'll take one example, risk, which you brought up. I don't believe women are less risk averse. I really just don't. We talk about that a lot, but when you look at the statistics, if you want to start a new business as a female entrepreneur, 4%, 4 % of venture capital funding goes to women. And so when you talk about, when you actually do the surveys of the women who've run the gauntlet, take it on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley, they hear they're too risk, they won't take enough risk. They're not taking enough risk. They're taking too much risk. They haven't thought of their business plan.

22:26When you put a male next to them, they run the gauntlet and they do much better. So to me, it's a bias we have in society that men and women have. So what do we need to do? We need to make sure more limited partners are looking at women-led businesses and quite frankly, people of color businesses because I believe women have a different lens on society than men. It's not good or better. It just is different. And I believe they have good business ideas. And we shouldn't, as an investor, and I am moving money in this direction, I don't believe we should leave money on the table. I think those are good businesses that will help us get through some of these caregiving struggles that we are facing now as a nation, especially with an aging population.

23:12Yeah, I would say the greatest exposure to inequality I registered or witnessed was in the 90s. I came of age, the dawn on the internet, I graduated from business school in 92, and I raised a bunch of money. I lived in San Francisco starting internet companies. And I'm embarrassed to admit this. it never dawned on me that every one of us that was raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, we were all white dudes. You weren't even allowed to be gay. I mean, you couldn't be, or outwardly gay. You couldn't. It was all the same person. It was all white men, typically in their 30s who had great credentials, Stanford or Berkeley.

23:58I went to Berkeley. And all of that risk capital was crowded into, what is that, you know, 11 % of the population, you know, it's a fragment. And it just never dawned on me that why aren't, you know, non-whites getting funded? Why aren't women getting funded? And things have gotten better. I remember Catherine Dillon, I mean, granted, it started from a terrible place, but Catherine Dillon, who's my business partner here. I remember we raised money from General Catalyst to kind of arguably one of the better venture capitalists east of the Mississippi. And we went in there for the last round and it was part of the last round of funding.

24:34We raised, I think, 17 million bucks or something in a A round for one of my companies. And we had to meet with all the partners. And all 27 of the partners, granted this was 15, 13 years ago, all 27 of the partners were men. And it didn't even dawn on me. And Catherine and Maureen, And basically they said to me, what the fuck? I'm like, what's wrong? And they're like, they couldn't find one woman. But I do think it's gotten a lot better. But where do you see the friction? We know the problems. Where do you see the friction and how do we address it? Yeah, so in addition to my philanthropic dollars, I also have a large investment fund because I believe it's so important to put my money where my mouth is and to role model what's right.

25:18Do I expect, and so, It is. That funding is going to limited partners who are over-indexing on women and people of color businesses. Because I believe if I can prove that I can get a good return from that, then people won't leave. You'll have men saying, oh, wait a minute. I want to crowd in on that business. I don't want to leave funding on the table, right? There's a great opportunity now with female sports. You're seeing those sports teams finally coming up and doing better. Billie Jean King has been on this, you know, forever. But now you're seeing people like Serena Williams has a great investment fund.

25:56There's Monarch Collective. So you're seeing the rise of women's NBA. And I believe you're going to start to see the rise in more other sports for women. That is a fantastic place to put money down. Just as one example, there are many more types of businesses. So I'm funding limited partners who are funding many others. again with this thesis that I have, and we'll see if it proves out to be right. So you've, speaking of philanthropy, you've committed a billion dollars towards women's health. And so just first off, I just want to say thank you. And that is, I talk a lot about, and I'm very passionate about the struggles that young men face in our society.

26:38And the inspiration for me focusing on this area was data I started getting from this, um, Brookings scholar named Richard Reeves. He's literally my, he's literally my Yoda on the topic. And he called me and he said, I'm going to start my own Institute. And despite the fact that your billion dollars is geared towards women's health, the American Institute for Boys and Men headed by this, this person that's literally changed my life, uh, Richard Reeves, you gave him or pledged$20 million. And so first, thank you. And the second is, why did you decide, given that the billion dollars is focused on women's health, to give$20 million to the American Institute for Boys and Men?