Melinda Gates

dollars to vaccine development, distribution, treatments, and more. It's one of the largest sums from any philanthropic effort around the globe. But while mass vaccinations are rapidly under way, the pandemic is far from over Urgent. Concerns about unequal distribution and recovery remained, and the possibility that not just developing countries,

but women worldwide will get left behind. Joining me on this edition of Bloomberg Studio one point oh to shine a light on the uneven road ahead, the co founder and co chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda Gates. Melinda, it's been a year since the pandemic completely changed our world. From your perspective, where are we right now in the fight against COVID. Well, I think

we still have a ways to go. You know, we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here in the United States, but until all Americans are vaccinated, we still have a ways to go. Um, But you know, it's gonna be a while until the entire world is vaccinated. So this is going to still be with us the next few years. And I think we're gonna have to really watch these variants that will be bouncing around the world. That's actually still quite concerning. What is it about the

variants that concern you? Well, because every time of we know virus is mutate, but when they mutate, you know, they can become sometimes more deadly or more contagious. And so any time you see these mutations, we need to be on top of them in terms of surveillance, and then we're gonna have to figure out do we need to tune various vaccines to take care of them. So your foundation has committed one point seven five billion dollars

to the fight against COVID. I know your team is very diligent about looking at where and how that money is spent. In your view, where is the vaccine rollout working, and what's not working. Well, I think it's working in some of our high income countries. Were starting to finally see you know, much broader distribution, for instance in the United States and in some of the European countries. But it is not at all working yet for middle and low income countries. And you know, those are places where

people are struggling. They have their luved ones who get ill. They can't get them to a hospital much less than I see you, and so they are really still struggling in many countries around the world. So there's obviously a moral case for vaccine equity, but what about the economic case. Why should somebody in New York or San Francisco care

when somebody in Africa gets the vaccine. Well, absolutely, it's the right moral thing to do, but economically, we're not going to have a swift a recovery in the United States or in Europe if we don't make sure that everybody gets vaccinated. Because what will happen is this disease,

you know, we know it crosses borders. We've seen it all over the world, and so as these variants break out, they will absolutely come back into the United States and Europe and Japan, and so our supply chains won't fully be up and running. We won't get our travel industry fully and leisure up and running, or business community up and running in terms of travel. So economically, if we're going to reopen the global economy, we've got to take

care of this everywhere. So if vaccines aren't distributed equally, obviously there's economic consequences, there will also be more deaths. What are the consequences of that, Well, more deaths I mean is it's a tragedy for every family that experiences a loss. But it's also I think we have to remember it's wreaking havoc on the health care systems of

these countries. And so what it means is a mom who is pregnant doesn't go in for her anti natal visits, she doesn't go in for delivery, so she has an unsafe delivery at home. It means we have forty nine million women that won't get contraceptives during this pandemic. That needs fifteen million unplanned pregnancies in one year. That's like adding up the cities of Chicago, New York, in l A and saying we're gonna have fifteen million unplanned pregnancies. Wow.

Vaccine nationalism is stepping up as this continues. You've got nations competing for supplies. Do you see a better way? Well? I think you know, we started off as a world with a good way, which is to try and pool both the demand and match it to what would be the supply, and to have financing for that. You know, the US didn't come into that financing until the last stimulus bill that happened in December. Uh, they finally put money forward for gobby which helps with this facility called

kovacs to purchase vaccines and get it organized. We just now are coming in with this latest stimulus bill for testing and treatment. Um. But you know that would have been the way to go, is to really match global demand and supply and first get it out to all the health care workers all over the world before you even begin then going to vulnerable populations. Meantime, there's continued disinformation about vaccines. How do you how do you and

Bill see that kind of disinformation? Misinformation? Yeah, when you see it, I will say, it's incredibly disheartening because honestly it causes death. People not doing the right thing, not getting their mom or their elderly father vaccinated. You know, will lose more people. We are losing more people, so

it's disheartening. UM. On the other hand, as more people are getting vaccinated, just take the United States, we're seeing more demand for vaccines, so we're finally seeing the countercyclical part of that argument. UM. But it's always disheartening to see something like that. Now, a huge part of your job before the pandemic was traveling around the world, meeting people, talking to them in person in far flung places that most of us don't get to go. How has your

job changed during COVID now that you can't make those trips. Well, I think, like so many others who are lucky enough to be able to have access to a computer in a good, good internet right, I'm doing a lot of meetings online UM, and they are pretty continuous throughout the day. I am certainly meeting UM with still leaders around the world,

even community organizers around the world. But I miss I miss the you know, deep connection and interaction with women in her home or a man who's working in his field, or the children. You know. I miss that, and so I look forward to when that will return, hopefully in the next year. This is my conversation with Melinda Gates,

co chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Up next, we did deeper into how the pandemic has derailed progress for gender equality, dealing a major setback to women in the workforce. With a Biden administration taking steps to promote women's equity, what else should the White House do to really make a difference and is it time for a female president. I'm Emily Chang, this is Bloomberg Studio. At one point, Oh, in your annual letter, you and Bill

said the recovery starts with women. What do you mean by that, Well, women have had the most devastation, women and people of color during this crisis. You know, we know women have left the labor force in droves. We know they're at home with this complete caregiving crisis, taking care of the young, taking care of the elderly. And so if we're going to have a full response and a swift response, we have to stop thinking, as a world of gender equality, is this nice thing to do

when we get to it, or this side issue. No, it is the central issue. If we're going to get a full recovery and a swift recovery, we've got to address all of the issues that are facing women. We are in a crisis for women and people of color in this country. Now. The last time you and I spoke, it was about your book The Moment of Lift, How Empowering Women Changes the World, that came out two years ago on the Heels of Me Too. There was a lot of hope. Have you seen that play out or

have you seen progress derailed? We've seen, you know, I would definitely say that was a moment of optimism for me. And I would say now I think women are in a moment of crisis. So we've seen a lot of work derailed. Um. You know, we've seen women who you know, women in the last thirty years were coming out of poverty as a globe and now we're seeing a huge setback in that arena. We're seeing set back in the labor force, the number women who stepped back from the

labor force in the United States. Two thirds of the jobs lost in South Africa were women's jobs. So I think we're in a moment of crisis. Um. But then on the flip side, I see these female leaders, Prime Minister just into Art and Prime Minister Merkel how well their countries are doing. Or I see these self bal groups in in India that immediately mobilized and got messages about COVID out to millions of people in northern India. So I see the hope on the other side, but

there's a lot of work to do. I was planning to ask you about New Zealand's just into art and Germany's angle and Merkel. Do you think it's a coincidence that both of these leaders who seem to have handled the pandemic better than any other leader around the world, do you think it's a coincidence that they're both women?

Not at all. You know, I spoke with both of them pretty early in the crisis, but where New zealand And had just taking care of COVID in their country the first time, and um and Prime Minister Merkel had it under control in Germany. And I was also speaking

to male leaders at the same time. But what I what I noticed when I talked to these two women a month apart, is that Prime Minister just Into Arden was thinking about all the island nations around her and that they were struggling, and so yes, they had it under control in New Zealand, but she was thinking about the whole ecosystem around them and everybody else. Prime Minister Merkel.

When I talked with her about, Wow, you all are doing an amazing job, she wanted to talk about the marginalized communities in Germany they weren't yet reaching, and she wanted to talk about how they were taking patients in from other countries into their emergency room. And I see you. So they're thinking about everybody else. And I see that sometimes in enlightened male leaders, but I think for the

women it just comes really naturally. So how did that compare with your early conversations with the Trump administer ration as you were working with the US government to deploy your own resources. Well, I think you know, there were certain people who are still in place who are absolutely incredible. Tony Fauci from the get go, just an amazing leader,

Francis Collins at the NIH. But you know, to talk to an administration who doesn't believe in science and basically wants to put their blinders on in terms of what the response needs to be in the United States, it was incredibly frustrating. And I am very happy to see a new administration who's not only taking this seriously but taking very bold and concrete actions. That's what we should expect as Americans. So, how have your conversations with a

Biden administration been so far? Now a few months into it, you know, what are you happy about in terms of what you're seeing, what needs work? I'm seeing the ad Biden administration absolutely listen to the science, believe, listen to the scientists, believe in the data. You're seeing them re empower CDC. CDC just came out with great guidelines for people who have been vaccinated. So they've taken these institutions that were strong and robust and they're empowering them again.

I was incredibly pleased to see the latest stimulus package pushed through and funded so swiftly for Americans. That's exactly the kind of action we need as Americans. The Biden administration just signed an executive order on gender equity on International Women's Day. What are some other concrete, tangible things you would like to see from the White House that would really make a difference for women in this country. Well,

I'd love to see an innovation fund. You know, in previous administrations there have been these innovation funds that make sure we get new innovations for instancing climate change or in other sectors. I would love to see an innovation fund focused on childcare. We have a caregiving crisis, not just care elderly care too. We have a caregiving crisis.

And yet there are great ideas out there, solutions for how you match markets, you match caregivers affordable, good, high quality caregivers with parents, or you match grandparents with college kids so they can get their prescriptions. Those kinds of ideas need to be funded and come forward so that we can come up with new innovations in society. When it comes to women and how much they've back slid in the pandemic, do you think we could see a lost generation of women as a result of the trauma

that we they have experienced in the last year. I think we could, but I don't think it's a necessary or a necessity. And I think, you know, one of the things that bind administration is talking about is paid family medical leave. We're the only industrialized country in the world that doesn't have it, and it's far from time we had it. And so I think we can take

this crisis that's happened to women. Women are in crisis at home, they are caring a lot, but we can use it to say, we're not just going to propel these women and help them back in the workforce. We're going to change the structure of the workforce for the next thirty years so we make it possible for moms and dads or like minded partners to work. We're gonna look at this as a forward looking workforce, not in nineteen fifties workforce where our dads went to work and

our moms stayed home. Well, and speaking of how the workforce will change going forward, I believe we're going to be in a more hybrid environment in the future, more flexible work, more people working from home. And I wonder if we're going to continue to see women in this difficult situation, like, how do you see the new normal for women being different than the new normal for men? And what should we be concerned about and preparing for.

I think we need to make sure that women aren't expect did to now continue to care for the children and the elderly and keep their job going. It's it's they're in a crisis that can't continue. The toll on women is enormous, So I think we need to say, how are we going to make sure we support women? How do we bring them back into the workforce, how do we reskill them if they want to change jobs, How do we make sure they have access to good childcare,

potentially even good universal preschool. And then how do we make sure as well that we're supporting them that if they have a sick family member, there's not just maternity leave or sick maternity days, but there's paid family medical leaves. So even the dad leaves the office to take the child to the pediatrician when the child gets sick, or takes care of the elderly grandparents. You're listening to my conversation with the co chair of the Bill and Melinda

Gates Foundation, Melinda Gates coming up? What about the children? And will this be the year of lost learning? How has the global pandemic? Why didn't the digital divide and is there actually enough money coming in from the philanthropic world to fight the pandemic on its own? Gates says governments need to up the ammy. I'm Emily Chang. This is Bloomberg Studio. At one point, Oh stay with us.

When you wrote your book, you you shared that you quit your own job at Microsoft because you were you assumed that you should stay home and take care of the kids. And then at a certain point you decided you wanted to go back to work. What were your motivations there? And you know, how would you encourage other women to summon their motivations. I would say, you know, you have to look at what you're doing and what

your expectations are. And I think for me it was always what I it hit these frustration points of my gosh, why am I doing all of this? And my husband is not, you know, And and so I think we all have to look at our homes and say who's doing what and how do we redistribute that workload? And we have to have those honest conversations with one another.

One of the stories I tell in my book when I did want to go back to work was, you know, Bill and I knew where we wanted to put our children in school, but it was well far away from our house, and I thought, hey, we could wait maybe till fourth or fifth grade. And he was adamant. He wanted them to start at preschool. And I just said, look, I can't be on the road driving all the time. I'm I see my road ahead and my life ahead

of the minivan. And so he finally offered to drive the kids to school, and it not only changed a norm and our family and he got that time with the kids, but when he went into the classroom, other debt moms expected their husbands then to drive because they said, if the CEO Microsoft is driving his kids to school, so can you. And it's those conversations at home, when we see what's right there and we have awareness, we

have the difficult conversation that we remodel norms inadvertently. Actually in society, I'm curious about female leadership and if you think female leadership could suffer as a result of the pandemic, we need more women leaders to help continue to pave the way. But if they're running companies and households, does that mean we won't see as many women advance into leadership roles as we might have seen how the pandemic not happen potentially, And that's why we need to make

sure we support them. I mean, there are fewer female CEOs of Fortune five hundred companies today than when we started into this pandemic. And you know, you can look at those on a case by case basis, but you also just have to look at what's coming up behind women. You know what's coming up behind that CEO? How many women and people of color are at all levels of leadership.

That's where I worry the most. And so without good supports, without flexible work hours, without paid family medical leave, without a network of support around them, yes, you will see women drop out of these middle manager positions just as they're climbing the ladder. And so when we go to them promote somebody into the C suite, there just aren't as many women. The harassment in the workforce, women change

their job. Women say they've been harassed in the workforce, and when they are, they leave their job within a two year rate. So they switch careers and they're not climbing the same ladder. That's a barrier we've got to look at. Now, we do have our first woman Vice president who is also a woman of color, and I don't know if it's a sign that that norms are changing changing, But my sons don't understand why there has

never been a woman president. To them, it seems obvious, and I wonder, do you think it's time for a woman to lead this country? Absolutely, it's time, and you know, and so there are many qualified women, but it's not very easy to climb the ladder in politics. So that's another place we need to support women at the local level, state level, federal level. You know, we keep ticking up slightly in Congress in terms of the number of women in Congress, but guess what, we're still sixty years away

from equality in Congress. And I don't think it's surprising that Kamala Harris came from the Senate. Those are great places to learn how to have the ultimate leadership role. But let's make sure women come up in politics so they're ready, and so there's a plethora of women we can choose from for the President of the United States. What about children? After a year for many kids at home, some of them don't even have access to a computer. How concerned are you about the digital divide and a

lost years for our children, boys and girls. I'm quite concerned. So, first of all, there are hundreds of millions of girls around the world who are out of the education system, and many of them won't actually go back. And here in the United States, I'm most worried about the low income children. As you say, they don't often have access to broadband or to internet or a teacher who's got a great curriculum to all of a sudden have to

switch and teach online. You know, that was a hard switch for teachers, but it's also a really hard switch for students, and so teachers have to be retrained and reskilled in the moment. So, yes, they've lost a year of schooling, but the learning losses could be even more substantial for low income kids, and I'm quite concerned about that.

For those who have had access to technology, Uh, we've had devices introduced to our children much sooner than we ever wanted to and for some parents that is terrifying. Are you concerned about screen time and the longer term impact on a generation of kids. Yes, I think we don't know what those impacts are. There is research that some of which has come out, some of which is ongoing. There are some positives, which is they can connect with friends,

they're connecting online, they're finding meaningful opportunities sometimes online. But yes, I think we don't know what it means for a generation of kids to be behind that screen so often. And so I tell parents, you know, just be sensible, make sure it gets out of their hands. We know it's not great for a parent to be on and spend forty extra minutes sucked into social media at night? How can that be good for a kid. So, you know, all those things that you know, we know are just

good parenting. Get the phone out of the room at night. You know, take the hard steps. It's just going to benefit your child. Do you think that school should reopen? I mean, if adults are going to be vaccinated by by May, maybe end of summer, it could be another year before our children are vaccinated. Should schools reopen in the fall? Regardless, I think schools will have to look in district by district what are the rates of COVID in their area based on people who have been vaccinated.

We don't know where we will be in the fall with variants. So you know, looking at the data today that we have, it sure looks like we can start to reopen more school But again, this thing has been very cyclical, So what it will look like in the fall, I'm not sure. You know. Ask me on September one what I think about which districts maybe should or shouldn't be open. I sure hope they can be open again. Now.

In closing, Melinda, your foundation has now donated several billions of dollars to health, to science, to climate, to education. And I wonder if you think we're going to see the most meaningful change in the world coming from philanthropy, coming from wealthy people like yourself who can make certain things a priority rather than governments in the future. Is that how the world is going to change? No, I don't think so. I think what we should expect is

that philanthropy can also often take risks. They can try innovations that sometimes work and sometimes fail. They can look for new solutions. They can help us collect the data, but ultimately it's always up to government to scale up these um innovations to create this change. The vaccine for COVID is a perfect example. Those are pharmaceutical companies working

with philanthropists and investors, but working with the government. Ultimately, it's billions of dollars from the government that will pull that vacccene through and purchase it for Americans and people in low income countries. So it's always up to government, but I think philanthropy or private sector and civil society can always help lead the way. All right, Melinda Gates, will continue to follow your work, and we're grateful for the work that you are doing. Thank you so much

for joining us today here at Bloomberg. It's wonderful to have you. Bloomberg Studio at one Point. I was produced and edited by Kevin Hines. Our executive producer is Alison Weiss. Our managing editor is Daniel Culbertson, with production assistants from Lauren Ellis and Mallory Abelhausen. I'm Emily Chang, your host and executive producer. This is Bloomberg and E