“In my line of work — improving the health and well-being of women and girls — ’empowerment’ is both the end we seek and the means we use to get there,” Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes in the foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog. “Our vision is that women and girls around the world are empowered to make decisions that benefit them and their families,” she states, highlighting a number of “practical issues” that affect whether “women can access and use contraceptives when they need them.” She continues, “If we can come up with good answers together, then women around the world will use new knowledge, new technology, their own networks, and their growing sense of confidence to start changing the social norms that prevent them from having more power over their own lives” (2/28).