Lifestyle

'WE DESERVE BETTER'

Billionaire Philanthropist Sparks Frenzy With Menopause Essay

Melinda French Gates, who was married to Microsoft founder Bill Gates for 27 years, also revealed a large donation to women’s health causes.

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

PublishedJun 9, 2026, 1:34 PM EDT

UpdatedJun 9, 2026, 3:58 PM EDT

Updated Jun 9, 2026, 3:58 PM EDTPublished Jun 9, 2026, 1:34 PM EDT

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Melinda French Gates sparked an online frenzy with an essay calling for a “menopause revolution” and committing to donate a large sum to women’s health causes.

On Thursday, Melinda, who was married to billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates until 2021, published an essay in The New York Times titled “Women, We Deserve Better Than This.”

“Here’s a scene that regularly plays out across the country: A woman walks into her doctor’s office with an increasingly debilitating set of symptoms—her sleep destroyed, joints aching, heart racing, memory slipping—and walks out with no diagnosis, no treatment and no plan,” Melinda, 61, wrote in her essay.

The philanthropist raised concerns over how menopause is handled in healthcare.

She shared that when she first entered menopause, she had to advocate for herself to get help with managing her symptoms—even with “access to excellent healthcare.”

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“Our society’s approach to menopause and perimenopause reflects the deep flaws of a health system that has long treated women as an afterthought,” she wrote.

Melinda noted that “women’s rights are under attack,” and detailed how the likelihood of a woman receiving inadequate care during menopause is “alarmingly high.”

“We need to change our assumptions about whose bodies are worth understanding,” she wrote. “We need a menopause revolution in this country.”

To address these issues, she committed an additional $215 million through her Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation.

Founded by Melinda, the group of organizations advocates for women through philanthropy and investments. In January, The New York Times revealed that her ex-husband donated an estimated $7.88 billion to the organization in 2024.

Even after their separation, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates each hold staggering wealth: As of June 2026, Bill is the 19th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $103 billion, while Melinda’s is estimated at $19.1 billion, making her the 135th-richest person globally.

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The new funding will be spent at least in part on women’s menopause care.

The essay prompted over 1,800 responses from readers of The New York Times, and many online conversations quickly followed.

The top comment under the article—with over 2,000 likes—reads, “Brava! I’m so tired of being told in a dismissive way by doctors, ‘Yeah, that’s menopause,’ whenever I try to engage with them on the symptoms mentioned in this article. No solutions. Not even any empathy. I hope the research Melinda sponsors turns up something useful.”

On Reddit, too, people expressed their support for Melinda, writing, “Amen to this!” and “Omg this is SO NEEDED!”

With this investment, the total Melinda has spent supporting women’s health over the past few years exceeds $600 million.

Melinda and Bill divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage. The ex-couple, who share three children, co-chaired their joint foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—now known as the Gates Foundation—until 2024.

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After Melinda resigned, she wrote on X: “Under the terms of my agreement with Bill, in leaving the foundation, I will have an additional $12.5 billion to commit to my work for women and families.”

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Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

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