Quote of the day by Melinda French Gates: "Shaming women for their sexuality is a standard tactic for…"
Melinda French Gates Quote of the day by Melinda French Gates "Shaming women for their sexuality is a standard tactic for drowning out the voices
Melinda French Gates Quote of the day by Melinda French Gates "Shaming women for their sexuality is a standard tactic for drowning out the voices of women who want to decide whether and when to have children." Melinda French Gates: The woman behind the words What Melinda French Gates was pointing to in the quote The bigger truth about shame How to apply this quote by Melinda Gates in everyday life Notice when shame is being used to end a conversation. If a disagreement suddenly turns to making someone feel embarrassed rather than answering what they said, that is often a sign their point is being dodged, not addressed. Try not to use shame as a weapon yourself. It is tempting to shut someone down by making them feel small. Engaging with their actual argument is harder, fairer and far more honest. Listen for the voices that get drowned out. The people who are shamed into silence often have something important to say. Make a little room for them to be heard. Keep a person's worth separate from your disagreement. You can disagree with someone's choices or opinions without trying to make them feel ashamed of who they are. Other famous quotes by Melinda French Gates "If you want to lift up humanity, empower women. It is the most comprehensive, pervasive, high-leverage investment you can make in human beings." "Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But the outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem." "A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman." "Optimism isn't a belief that things will automatically get better; it's a conviction that we can make things better." Letting people speak Shame is one of the oldest tools for keeping people quiet.
Make someone feel embarrassed enough about who they are, and you can often stop them from speaking up or standing their ground. Melinda French Gates, a philanthropist who has spent years working on women's health around the world, points to one place she believes this happens. When women try to have a say over whether and when they have children, she argues, one common way to shut down the conversation is to shame them. Beneath her specific point about women lies a broader and very human truth about how shame works, and why it is worth recognising.Melinda French Gates is an American philanthropist and a long-standing advocate for women and girls. With her then-husband, she co-founded one of the world's largest charitable organisations, which has poured enormous resources into global health and fighting poverty.The quote comes from her 2019 book, The Moment of Lift, which drew on years of travel, meeting women in some of the poorest parts of the world. A major focus of her work has been access to family planning, helping women who want it to get contraception so they can space out or limit pregnancies, protect their health, and better care for the children they already have.In many of the places she visited, this is closely tied to survival, since complications in pregnancy and childbirth remain a leading cause of death for women. That global health work is the backdrop to this quote.Her argument is that when women speak up for a say in family planning, the response is sometimes not a real debate but an attempt to embarrass them into silence.