MICHEL MARTIN, host:
Now we want to turn to people who are taking an ambitious approach to addressing big economic and social justice issues around the world. Our next two guests are part of the effort, Women Moving Millions, which aims to improve the lives of women and girls around the world. The fundraising initiative which began in 2006 had the initial goal of getting 90 women to commit at least $1 million each to addressing the big issues around the world. To hear more about the initiative we're joined by co-founder Helen LeKelley Hunt and author and activist Gloria Steinem, who served as an advisor to the initiative. Welcome to you both. Thanks for joining us.
Ms. HELEN LEKELLEY HUNT (Co-founder, Women Moving Millions): Thank you.
Ms. GLORIA STEINEM (Author and activist): Good to be here.
MARTIN: Helen, just to let people know, you and your sister, Ambassador Swanee Hunt kicked things off by pledging $10 million. Why this focus on women and girls?
Ms. LEKELLEY HUNT: Well, I think in the '70s, Gloria and her colleagues made it clear that women's prosperity is key to the health of society and the health of the world. And men are now, decades later, chiming in. Kofi Annan of the U.N., Nicholas Kristof. And women are stepping up to the plate, funding big and bold and at unprecedented levels to help strengthen women's safety and lift women's voice around the world.
MARTIN: I want to hear more about that big and bold and how you got, particularly in a recession, women to pledge these significant dollars. But Gloria Steinem if you would chime in here. What is significant about focusing on women and girls? I think many people would be puzzled by that. They'll say, well, aren't all - both genders suffering right now?
Ms. STEINEM: Well, this is really seriously remedial, you might say. Because the field of philanthropy, whether it's corporate or individual or foundation, at the beginning of the women's movement was only giving one percent of all contributions to women and girls. And now it's up to five percent. So, you know, it's very important that this be equalized because, actually it should be more than equalized, because women are a very disproportionate share of the people in the world who are illiterate, who are poor. Their health is even more important since the health of the next generation depends upon it. There are all kinds of reasons, including the health of families. I'm not saying this in a critical way, but it's statistically true that if you give men money, they're more likely to use it on external expenses and so on, but women are more likely to use it on the welfare of the family.
MARTIN: The fund makes the point on its Web page that women grow most of the world's food, that they grow 80 percent of the world's food, but receive less than 10 percent of the agricultural assistance that is donated in various projects around the world. And that 70 percent of those in abject poverty are women. Gloria, what kinds of projects does the fund envision supporting that alleviates, that addresses these issues?
Ms. STEINEM: Well fortunately, there are women's funds on the ground in now 13 different countries around the world that are giving money in a very organic, grassroots, practical way with people on the board who are themselves from the community and are themselves among those doing the project.
So it's not only a different paradigm of giving, it's a different paradigm of using that money. And there are all kinds of projects, from ones we might expect, like battered women's shelters, to ones that are small-scale entrepreneurial ones that allow women and their families to become independent, you know, every kind of project that you can imagine.
But the unique thing about it is that the women's funds themselves have the wisdom. I mean, this is a bottom-up paradigm, not a top-down. It's not about instructing them, it's about listening to what they need and supporting them.
MARTIN: But you don't get a million dollars from the bottom up, or maybe you do, and I just don't know about it. I wanted to ask Helen, why the focus on women giving a million dollars and up? Is it because it's attention-getting, because it addresses a stereotype that women don't give as much as men do and therefore are not as much of the targets for philanthropic solicitation as men are? Why this focus on women, wealthy women helping other women?
Ms. HUNT: It actually simply makes sense. It's the best, most strategic funding you can do. The fact that this network of women's funds has proliferated around the world is sort of evidence of a zeitgeist.
These funds, by and for women, just supporting woman across the board, because they have been eclipsed by other funding and by a lot of politics, right now I think the imploding of the global financial market is sort of evidence that a patriarchal form of managing money isn't working in the world. And women - this is just - it's been like spontaneous combustion, and women began to step up and start funding women's funds at the million-dollar-plus level quietly.
There was no fanfare to it. And Gloria and I and others were looking at it and said, hey, we need to sound the trumpets here. This is exciting. These women are smart. This is what makes sense. This is what the world needs right now.
MARTIN: You're saying that money was already there, people just didn't see it?
Ms. HUNT: I did some research on the 19th-century suffrage movement and discovered that the activist funded the suffrage movement at $50, $100 every time they met. But the high-net-worth women sat out on the sidelines while these suffragettes were marching, being dragged to prison, being force-fed, petitioning. The high-net-worth women were funding their husbands alma maters and they were funding places where they - institutions where they had no voice.
Women, it's like a new consciousness, and these donors know it. This is something new. We are transforming the consciousness in this world by putting out there million-dollar-plus gifts to women and girls, and the donors are responding. They know it's time, and they're stepping up to the plate.
MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin, and I'm - speaking with Helen LaKelley Hunt and Gloria Steinem about the Women Moving Millions effort. That's a fund that solicits donations of at least $1 million from women around the world to help poor women and children around the world.
Gloria Steinem, talk a little bit more about that. You're so associated with the grassroots effort. Talk to me about your take on this idea of the women raising this significant sum and what significance that has.
Ms. STEINEM: I came to this as a fundraiser. And what I discovered over the years is that women who earned a little money were more able to write a check than - many women, perhaps most, in families of inherited wealth.
The masculinization of wealth is something we don't talk about as much as the feminization of poverty. But Helen is being modest there because she has been a model of a rebellious woman of wealth, and others have followed. Because in those families, what happens is that the, frequently, that the money goes to sons or even sons-in-law, that it's controlled by money managers, that it just passes through women, but women never have access to it.
So it is a very significant rebellion among a group of people who in some ways have the worst of both worlds. That is, they may not have full equality within their own families, and yet the people outside those families resent them for the money they supposedly have.
And I'm so proud and so moved that there is now this group. I mean, what Helen and others have done is to put together a community of these women, who have been isolated within these shells in which they were sometimes both powerless and resented for a power they didn't have.
MARTIN: Helen, how will you know whether this fund has succeeded in its objective?
Ms. HUNT: I've had donors read about this in the paper or just read our material. They've knocked on my door, come to me with tears in their eyes. And one donor in Dallas said, I've waited my whole life for this initiative. There are so many women of wealth, and the money sits in the bank, and it's needed in the world.
They are - women of high net-worth are needed to transform this world into a more harmonious, gender-balanced family.
MARTIN: Okay.
Ms. HUNT: And the women are approaching this with joy. I cannot tell you how many women have thanked me because I took their million-dollar check.
MARTIN: Okay.
Ms. HUNT: They are joyful, they are singing. This is a joyful group of women, and the nucleus has surprised both Gloria and me…
MARTIN: All right.
Ms. HUNT: …and the others involved with the amount of energy and joy, and we know it's going to ripple all around the world.
MARTIN: Well, we have to leave it there for now. I understand that there will be some fundraising figures to report by the end of the week. We'll look forward to reading about that. Helen LaKelley Hunt is the co-founder of Women Moving Millions. Gloria Steinem is an author and activist who served as an advisor to the initiative. I thank you both so much for joining us.
Ms. STEINEM: Thank you, Michel.
Ms. HUNT: You're welcome, bye-bye. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
