Recommendations from our site
“Before reading it, I had not appreciated the extent to which some wealthy women have used their privilege, including their monetary power, to make positive change happen for all women. This idea that philanthropy is power is often said as if that’s obviously a bad thing: any use of power is necessarily an abuse of power. What Johnson shows is that ‘Yes, people do have power with resources, and you can use it well.’ Her book includes the powerful example of Mary Garrett, who offered to fund the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, but only if women students were allowed to enter on equal terms with male applicants, and become doctors. Imposing that condition was clearly an example of a wealthy donor exerting financial power, but I think we would all agree today that was a good use of power. Johns Hopkins didn’t let women students in because it was the right thing to do, they were forced to do so in order to receive the funding they wanted.” Read more...
