The Gates Foundation is pledging to donate $2.1bn to support women’s economic and health issues in its first major initiative since the world’s largest philanthropic group was jolted by the announcement last month that its co-chairs, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, were ending their marriage.

The issue of gender equality is dear to French Gates, a former Microsoft executive, who has in recent years embraced it as her overriding mission. In addition to the Gates Foundation, she also operates a $5bn investment fund, Pivotal Ventures, devoted to women’s causes.

But the Gates Foundation’s support for women’s issues has become awkward after reports emerged about Bill Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who killed himself in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial over charges that he trafficked underage girls.