The philanthropist and wife of Bill Gates on what she tells her kids, getting women into tech and the perils of wealth

Melinda Gates is co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which she set up with her husband, Bill Gates. It is the largest private charitable organisation in the world and uses Microsoft’s billions in diverse philanthropic drives: supplying vaccines and birth control to developing countries and working to get the world’s 130 million girls not in formal education into school. Gates was herself educated in an all-girls Catholic high school in Dallas and studied computer science and economics at university before taking a job with “a smallish software company called Microsoft”. Her new book The Moment of Lift is an illuminating and often moving scrutiny of the ways in which the lot of women can be improved; her argument is that it is only by involving women that the world will be changed for the better. She lives in Seattle with her husband and their three children.

What, aside from donating, are the top three things a western woman could do to improve her situation and help the world beyond herself?
The first thing I’d urge is: look into your own home. Figure out whether you have true equality. Sit down with your partner and say: “OK, who is doing the dishes? Who is putting the rubbish out? Who is doing the gardening? Do we need to make some changes?” [Her book describes her own negotiations with Bill over divisions of labour – he volunteers to do the school run.] And if there isn’t equality, you need to bring up some tough conversations about unpaid labour in your home. The second thing that still needs saying to women is that it is essential to vote – and to vote for candidates whose policies best support women. And the third thing is: look at your workplace. Is there full transparency about pay?