Melinda French Gates to donate $1 billion in support of gender equality

In a press conference Melinda French Gates said she would be donating a sum of $1 billion over the next 2 years to individuals and institutions who would be working towards gender equality and women’s rights in the USA. This is the second time within 5 years that Gates has made a commitment of donating a sum of $1 billion.

In 2019, she made a commitment to give the sum over a period of 10 years  to expand women’s rights and powers. Earlier this May, 2024, she announced she would step down from the Melinda Gates & Bill Gates Foundation. She received $12 billion from the creator of Microsoft for her philanthropy in the future.

French Gates has been public about gender equality and women rights for a long time and has been quoted saying, “Decades of research on economics, well being and governance make it crystal clear that investing in women and girls are beneficial.”

In the last few weeks she has started directing over $200 million through grants offered by her organisation Pivotal Ventures towards the cause. The groups that have received the amount are National Women’s Law Centre, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and Center for Reproductive Rights.

Other organisations that received the grants are MomsRising, created for supporting women’s economic security. The grants receiver contains a news and media outlet named The 19th, that publishes women centric news, gender and policy news.

The president of National Domestic Workers Alliance that caters to a lot of nannies, house cleaners, homecare workers and others in the USA said in an interview, “The flexible terms and multi year security the grant provides are a significant help to the organisation, but the message it sends is far more important.”