Melinda French Gates

And what I came to see is we don't focus on women's health.

We just – as a world, like if you – I started to look at the data about women and women's lives and what do we collect, you know, because the foundation we often worked off of data.

And I realized the data on women's health was very sparse.

We knew a little bit about their reproductive health and we knew a little bit about their maternal mortality at the time they gave birth or died in childbirth.

But we knew very little.

And if less than 1 percent –

of all global health and research funding goes towards women's health, and yet where 50% of the population, there's a problem there.

And so I started to say to myself, wow, as I formed Pivotal Ventures, which I did in 2015, I really studied the barriers of what holds women back in our own country, the United States, and around the world.

And it's because we're

Where we've done research and where we have funded around health, we've assumed the man's body as the default body.

And then hers kind of comes next.

But now we're learning that when you invest in women's health, our bodies work very differently than men.

And so I'm really investing in lots of ways now in women's health to make sure we can find good solutions, break through the barriers for women.

Yeah.

So I know from longstanding health research when I was at the Gates Foundation is that reproductive health is the number one most important thing.

You have to at least do that because when a woman –

has access to a contraceptive, a contraceptive of her choice.

She will space the births of her children.

She is healthier.

She doesn't lose her life.