After 27 years of marriage, Bill and Melinda Gates have announced their divorce, saying “we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple”. As co-chair of the philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she controls the distribution of billions. Has she stepped out too far from her husband’s shadow?
The divorce of a couple like Bill and Melinda Gates is, of course, news all over the world since it involves a lot of money. According to the divorce papers filed, they did not sign a pre-nuptial agreement, and nor has Melinda requested any spousal maintenance. However, the big question remains: how will they continue to operate their foundation?
The beginning…
Because the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private charity fund in the world, it is no coincidence that Melinda Gates, along with Bill, its co-founder, and chairman, are in the top echelons of most powerful women and men in the world, according to Forbes magazine.
Born 56 years ago in Dallas, Texas as Melinda French, she studied computer science and economics. She then began working for the software company Microsoft in the late 1980s where she led the development of various software products, among other things. At Microsoft, she also met the company’s co-founder, Bill Gates who she married in 1994, and the first of their three children was born two years later. Although Bill would later become the richest man in the world, today he no longer holds that position but still has a tidy 120 billion euros in assets.
Philanthropic work
Melinda Gates quit Microsoft to make more time for her family and to seek, with her husband, ways of spending their vast fortune on philanthropic work. In 2000 this resulted in the establishment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which now has a capital of about 40 billion euros and 1,600 employees.
The Gates Foundation donates around 4 billion euros annually, according to its latest annual report. This money is mainly directed towards fighting poverty and diseases such as polio and malaria, and to improving the standard of American education. Last year, the foundation released 1.5 billion euros to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly focusing on the development and distribution of vaccines.
Criticism
However, the foundation and its philanthropy have also been the subject of certain criticism. “You have to be very careful that social involvement is an enrichment of democracy and not a threat,” says Theo Schuyt, Professor of Philanthropy, Sponsoring and Volunteering at Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. For example, is it desirable for a private entity, led by two people without a medical background, to have so much control over the medical research that is carried out? “They can influence in a less democratic way with a bag of money.” Meanwhile, critics argue that there is a better way to distribute Gates’s billions through the government and through higher taxes.
Equal rights
In recent years, Melinda Gates began to step out of her husband’s shadow. In her book, The Moment of Life, she describes how she asked Bill to co-write the foundation’s annual letter with her in 2013 which turned into a fight, and that year she eventually wrote a separate text. In 2015, the two did put their signature to a joint letter. “He has had to learn to be an equal, and I have had to learn to stand up for myself and be an equal,” Melinda Gates said in her book.
In 2015, she founded the investment company, Pivotal Ventures, on her own in order to promote social equality. She also emerged as a prominent advocate for women’s rights arguing that contraception is one of the most important means of improving the position of women and fighting poverty.
Fight for birth control
“I am a practicing Catholic, but every time I traveled through the developing world and heard the most tragic stories, I realized that religious and political controversies have caused so many women not to have access to contraception,” Melinda said. “While it is often really a matter of life and death for these women and their children to be able to get a contraceptive injection or IUD.”
Over recent years, the relationship between Bill and Melissa Gates has become increasingly difficult leading, “after much thought” to the couple deciding to split up. However, they have pledged to continue to work together at the foundation after their divorce has been finalised.
Theo Schuyt expects that this will have little effect on the foundation in the short term. Many projects are in place for a long period of time and are overseen by professional staff.
In the longer run, the divorce may influence the investments that are made; for example, Melinda Gates may become even more independent and wish to place a stronger emphasis on women’s rights and birth control.
