Four programs promising entrepreneurial equity got $40 million from three of the wealthiest women in the world on Thursday, July 29th.
The Equality Can’t Wait Challenge is a funding competition that launched last year. Its goal is to promote gender equity in the United States in concrete ways, giving women more influence at all levels of business and politics. The Challenge has four categories: tech, higher education, caregiving, and minority communities.
The winners, chosen from over 500 submitted proposals, are each receiving a $10 million donation. The money this year is coming from the Challenge’s sponsors: Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott, and the foundation of Lynn Schusterman.
The winners, chosen by a neutral party, are:
Building Women’s Equality through Strengthening the Care Infrastructure, a project to work on how we perceive caregiving.
Changing the Face of Tech, an initiative to support women in the tech sector, which is still a notorious boy’s club.
Girls Inc.’s Project Accelerate, a program to support young women in career entry after college. Women are more likely to graduate from college than men, but they are less likely to find a job in their field of study within the first three years after graduation.
The Future is Indigenous Womxn, an initiative supporting businesses owned by Native American women in the United States.
French Gates and Scott are both among the wealthiest women in the world, and both have signed the Giving Pledge, swearing to donate over half of their fortunes during their lifetimes to charitable ends. French Gates in particular has pledged to spend at least $1 billion toward gender equity programs in the United States. She sees the wildly unequal numbers of women versus men in the upper echelons of business and in politics as an issue requiring direct action, not something to be allowed to work itself out over time.
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