Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward.

In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.

When we invest in women and girls, we are investing in the people who invest in everyone else.

Bill [Gates] and I believe philanthropy can only be effective if it starts things and proves whether they actually work or not. That's the place that governments often don't want to, or can't, work.

We have to look at it country by country. In places like the developing world where, as you say, in Mumbai, it's about five hours' gap between what a woman does and a man does. You have to start by recognizing the problem and talking about it, trying to change those roles.

Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.

I think it's very important that we instill in our kids that it has nothing to do with their name or their situation that they're growing up in; it has to do with who they are as an individual.