Women and Philanthropy

Last December, Joan Holmes met in India with women investors from developed countries, and with women leaders from India and Bangladesh. In a meeting with the investors, she spoke about The Hunger Project’s Women and Philanthropy Initiative, from which these comments are taken.

Women and Philanthropy is an opportunity for women to lay claim to their money and channel it appropriate to their commitment.

Philanthropy is the next frontier for women in their own liberation in the developed world. Women in the developed world may feel there’s nothing but possibility. In one way that’s true, and in another way, there’s no way out of here.

The Condition of Patriarchy

The “here” I refer to is patriarchy - a universal mind-set that has been in existence since the dawn of civilization. Our behavior as women in the developed world is as much an adaptation to that system as is men’s behavior.

In the developing world, where the manifestations of patriarchy are particularly severe, they lead to the persistence of hunger and the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. But women and men in the developed world also live within the patriarchic system. As a society, we are generally unconscious of the fact that we live within this universal mind-set, that it completely shapes the world, and that, to date, it is largely unexamined.

We may complain about the consequences of patriarchy, but complaining is just another adaptation to it. It is as reinforcing of patriarchy as if women didn’t take up their own cause.

In the patriarchic system, men get the “goodies” - the power, the money. And there is no question that men have abused that privilege. Yet men also pay a price. Men often shut down their hearts and are unable to communicate about emotions. Men often cannot be co-equal partners with women. The cost can be seen in alcoholism, workaholism and war. We’ve barely begun to identify the cost to men of the patriarchic system.

Women have begun to identify the cost to themselves, and in that sense, women are leading the way.

In our struggle as women to achieve equality and be fully expressed human beings, if we see the struggle as between genders, then we actually reinforce and validate the patriarchic mind-set.

Instead, if we as women say, “Let’s look at the adaptations we’ve had to make within the system of patriarchy, and see what we need to do to transform our way of being,” then we will not be accommodating patriarchy, we’ll be catalyzing its transformation.

It’s important to identify the beliefs inherent in patriarchy.

The beliefs about women are that they are incapable, incompetent, weak, untrustworthy, of less value than men, and need to be controlled and dominated.

The beliefs regarding men are that they are competent, able, strong, rational, not emotional, of more value than women, and that they have a God-given mandate to control, be in charge and dominate.

What are the consequences of buying into those beliefs?

For a woman to buy into “I’m incompetent, submissive and of less value” is to not be fully realized as a human being. And for men to buy into “I’m better, more competent and more valuable,” when there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is to live a lie, and therefore to live a distorted and dehumanizing existence.

With this recognition, we start to understand - not condone, but understand - that if you have that big a lie on the planet for so many years, the only way you can keep it in place is by violence or the threat of violence. And we need to recognize that the greatest human rights violation on the planet today is violence against women.

No one is winning within the universal mind-set of patriarchy. Women are leading confined, distorted, shrunken lives, and so are men. Men are just doing it with more power.

The Hunger Project is designed to create interventions so that all people - women and men - have the chance to be fully realized, fully humanized, fully co-equal partners. Whether we do it in a village in Africa, or in Philadelphia, the Netherlands, Switzerland or California - that is the name of the game.

About Women’s Personal Investment

How does this translate into how we as women invest our money?

Research shows that women tend to worry more about their financial future than men do, yet do less about it. Women are more likely to invest in safe, conservative, non-growth-oriented investments. And they are less willing than men to take risks to have their money grow. Even though women’s investment clubs generate better returns than men’s, women are still more cautious, despite research that indicates that women make good financial decisions.

Our Portfolio as Humanity

Financial advisors say you need to have a diversified portfolio. Let’s look at a diversified portfolio for the betterment of humanity.

When we consider all the international giving and governmental international aid programs, humanity’s portfolio is weighted toward safe, conservative, low-yield investments. Those investments maintain the status quo; they do not alter or transform it.

Regarding HIV/AIDS in Africa, a conservative, non-growth, safe investment would be to build orphanages for all the orphans being created by the crisis. Another safe investment is to invest in the medicine needed to keep people with HIV healthy. It’s important to have orphanages, and it’s important to have the medicine to stay healthy with HIV, but both only maintain the status quo.

To get balance in the portfolio, we want some investments that are a little more high-risk and high-yield. Fewer people understand it initially, but such investments can lead to tremendous growth for the future of humanity.

There are very few organizations that invest in the transformation of the status quo, not its continuation. The Hunger Project is that kind of organization.

When we do a workshop in Uganda for experts from eight African countries, and insist that it address gender inequality, because gender inequality is the driving force of HIV/AIDS in Africa - that’s a high-risk investment. But the pay-off is 100,000 villagers taking the workshop, and launching campaigns to transform gender inequality.

In India, you could invest in organizations that do some good work, or you could say, “The subjugation of women is the root cause of the persistence of hunger, and we’re going to make a high-risk investment and empower women to be the key change agents.” That’s not as easily understood initially, but it is what will give the biggest return on your money.

High-Risk, High-Yield Investment

Women and Philanthropy is not about getting together to make a safe, charitable investment. There are a lot of people on the planet doing that. We are taking the opportunity to diversify that portfolio, because what we’re investing in is high-growth interventions: transformation for the betterment of humanity.

When women take on philanthropy, there are two things that must happen: First, an individual woman must lay claim to her own money and be bold enough to invest it appropriate to her means. Then, in The Hunger Project, she invests it in interventions at the root cause of the problem, not in charitable contributions at the periphery of the problem.

We’re not building orphanages. We’re addressing the gender inequality that gives rise to the spread of HIV/AIDS. If you go to people and say we’re building an orphanage, they open up their wallets. If you’re talking about gender inequality, HIV/AIDS and their relationship, you have to speak a little longer in order to have people say, “That’s an investment I want to make.”

It takes courage for The Hunger Project to be bold in its intervention and transformation. It takes courage for women to go beyond how we were taught to relate to money.

Women investors in The Hunger Project have the opportunity to match their financial courage to the boldness of The Hunger Project’s interventions. As women investors in The Hunger Project, we gain the opportunity to stop complaining about the situation and step up to the plate and start shaping the world’s agenda with our money and our power.