Melinda French Gates is done waiting for us to “Remember the ladies”

The billionaire is placing a big bet on a vision Abigail Adams saw in 1776.

A few months before America declared independence from Britain, Abigail Adams urged her husband, future president John Adams, to pay “care and attention” to women in the new laws he was shaping. It would be easy to say she was ahead of her time calling for gender equality during the American revolution, except that philanthropist Melinda French Gates says she hears the same thing today — 248 years later.

French Gates is tired of waiting. She recently announced she's spending $1 billion over the next two years to uplift women and families around the world.

Abigail would be proud.

See, in the spring of 1776, Abigail wrote John a request and a warning: “I desire you would Remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.”