Melinda French Gates Commits $150 Million to Help Women Thrive at Work

This article originally appeared on Economist Impact.

Renee Wittemyer sat down with Economist Impact to discuss how policymakers and business leaders can remove workplace barriers and contribute to a systemic shift in women’s power and influence.

Over the past five years, women have made vast and growing strides—reaching record representation as public officials, C-suite leaders and venture capitalists. The issue of gender equality has recently been in the national conversation, with historic women candidacies (including many wins) at the state and federal levels, notable women leaders in corporate America, and significant discussions around advancing women’s health.

Since 2019, philanthropist Melinda French Gates has committed $2 billion, through her organization, Pivotal, toward advancing women’s power and influence—positioning more women of all backgrounds to make decisions, control resources and shape policies. Pivotal recently conducted a survey to better understand the barriers women continue to experience and where women have made progress in the past five years. The findings showed that removing barriers in the workplace would create an immediate and systemic shift in women’s power and influence. Renee Wittemyer, Pivotal’s Vice President of Program Strategy, discusses what the results say about how leaders can implement changes and policies that allow women to thrive and advance in their careers.

What did you learn from this research?

Pivotal has been working in this space since 2019. Since then, external data has shown that women have made large gains in representation in senior leadership positions. Twice as many women are graduating with computing degrees, a crucial entry point for their impact on the tech sector. We’ve also seen evidence-based success with specific solutions, like company investments in child care, when deployed at scale.

We surveyed 5,000 people in the United States, including 4,000 women and non-binary people and 1,000 men, to understand if, and how, we have progressed on gender equality over the past five years, and where we are stalling and barriers remain.

The survey results reveal significant barriers that women still experience at work. Chief among them is the need for caregiving supports and resources. Since 2019, there has been a 16-percentage point increase in women reporting caregiving as a factor that holds them back professionally. This is because women are more likely than men to have to make hard trade-offs between advancing their careers and caregiving responsibilities.

Lack of caregiving supports are compounded by what economist Claudia Goldin has researched on inflexible jobs, that require exceptionally long hours. [1] These jobs—in tech or finance or senior leadership, for example—tend to lead to significant wealth, power and influence, but their structure makes these roles less achievable for those with demands outside of work, such as caregiving responsibilities. Many women have to choose between having a demanding job with a higher salary and more responsibility, or having flexibility that aligns with other life priorities.

These barriers contribute to the “broken rung,” where women are less likely than men to get their first promotion to manager, which is the single biggest drop-off point for women’s promotions. [2] Manager promotions often occur in a person’s late 20s to early 30s, which is around the average age that women have their first child (27). [3] This is when we see women begin to have to make trade-offs—women aged 18-24 are more likely to report prioritizing their career than their male counterparts, but this reverses in the next age group, between 25-34, when women begin to prioritize other things and men’s career prioritization increases.

What is driving the changes in prioritization for women in the workplace?

The timing of the drop-off, from 25 to 34 years old, maps almost directly to the challenges that women face around issues like caregiving. Twenty-nine percent of women said the hours required of senior positions would conflict with other priorities. This is 7 percentage points more than men.

The data also revealed startling levels of toxic workplaces, with growing threats of violence and harassment and lingering bias toward women. This is especially true for vulnerable populations: Women who make less than $25,000 a year are four times as likely to name violence as a career barrier than those who earn over $200,000. In addition, 20% of women 18-24 and 16% of women 25-34 said sexual harassment is the biggest career barrier they face.

Societal biases also have an impact on women’s career advancement. About a quarter of men believe men are better suited for senior business roles and are better than women at making hard decisions as political leaders (a much smaller percentage of women share these views). And nearly half of men and women believe women are naturally better suited for child care than men. Experiencing these biases makes it more difficult for women to gain respect as leaders, which impacts whether women want to or feel that they can advance.

What is Pivotal doing to address these remaining burdens in the workplace?

Melinda French Gates announced that as part of her commitment to advance women’s power and influence, $150m will go directly toward removing barriers for women in the workplace. We will support partners who work across three different strategies:

First, seeding innovations to build healthy workplaces. We need evidence-based solutions that will lower barriers in a scalable way.

Second, public policy. Policy levers have been impactful in changing not only private-sector workplaces, but all workplaces, so we’re focused on supporting the establishment of universal protections for women and working people.

Third, AI and tech innovation. AI is rapidly growing, and women are more underrepresented in innovation roles. AI will continue to have a growing and disproportionate impact on society, and we want to build the pipeline of women leaders shaping AI and ensure companies deploying AI are maximizing its benefits and minimizing its harms. We also see opportunities to leverage AI to remove workplace barriers for women as it is integrated into HR systems and other practices. Our partners are working to increase entry for women in technical roles and build healthier workplaces that improve career progression.

What would you like private-sector leaders and policymakers to take away from this research?

Private-sector leaders need to be intentional about not only identifying barriers but also adopting innovative, scalable systems designed to help women succeed. Leaders need to think about this holistically—from workforce entry, to retention and progression, to retirement. I want policymakers to see the advancement of women in the workplace as foundational to the strength of our economy and our families, regardless of political party. Our partners will work to support workplace standards and reforms focusing on key areas such as fair pay (like minimum wage, overtime, equal pay protections) and security (like freedom from violence and harassment).

We want to see progress in the next decade. We are impatient for change. And so we need to see more business decision-makers and policymakers advocating for that change and contributing to removing workplace barriers. And we as funders will continue to leverage philanthropic dollars to advance this issue in 2025 and beyond.

References:

1. Harvard Business Review, The Problem with “Greedy Work,” 28 September 2021
2. McKinsey & Company, "Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report."
3. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics, "Births and Natality."