[MUSIC]
What's your ambition?
Take a second, pause and think about it.
What's an ambition that you have for yourself?
Whether it's to become the next Blockchain investor.
To launch that start up you've always dreamed of, or
to become the next secretary of defense.
Whatever it might be,
imagine how amazing you're going to feel when you realize that ambition.
Now, let's just say I arbitrarily decide to draw a line down the room,
include Jodie in the line on this side.
I tell all of you on this side of the room, but
actually, just because I decided, you don't get to realize your ambition,
because you sat in that seat, you don't get the opportunity to pursue your dreams.
Imagine how much it would suck to have your ambition taken away from you.
This is what happens to women all over the world.
Let me walk you across the world for a second, to a rural part of Kenya.
It's a scorching hot day, and I'm sitting under a shady tree, talking to
a bunch of girls and asking them that same question that I just asked all of you.
What's your ambition?
The girls respond, to be a doctor, to be a lawyer, to be an astronaut.
Just like you and me, these girls imagine a bright future for themselves.
Yet as my conversation with them continues,
I begin to realize that they're not going to realize their ambition.
That because of factors beyond their control,
they won't have the opportunity to pursue their dreams.
One of the girls, Dorothy, who I got to know well during this time,
tells me that every morning, she wakes up at 4 AM before school.
And she walks two hours to a well gets water and carries it home for her family.
After school, she's the one who's expected to take care of her younger siblings, and
cook dinner for the family.
While Dorothy's brothers are studying, her and
millions of girls like around the world, are expected to on household work.
When money is tied parents sent a clear signal by sending their sons to school but
asking their daughters to stay home.
And when girls do make it to the classroom,
they have to listen to their teachers make comments like, don't do math like a girl.
Girls are constantly told implicitly and explicitly,
that their ambitions are not as important as their brothers.
And what does this mean?
This means that less than 15% of the girls that
I met that summer will graduate from high school.
Their ambitions of being doctors, lawyers, and astronauts will get crushed.
And instead they'll get married young, give birth to multiple children, and
then they'll ask their daughters to stay at home and help with household tasks.
Their daughters will become the next generation of women
who have to carry the water.
This is the heartbreaking reality of so
many of the girls who I met in Muhuru Bay, Kenya seven years ago.
At that time, I was thinking what some of you might be thinking right now.
This is extremely sad, but it's also kind of expected
in a low income and rural place like Muhuru Bay.
I left the situation feeling totally helpless,
I wanted to make a difference but didn't know how.
Several years later I decided to apply to Stanford's Graduate school of Business.
When I got the infamous call from Derek Bolton, I was elated
I was so excited, and I thought that such a well-resourced and
elite place like the JSB, I would find my answers to these questions.
I also assumed that for the first time in my life, I would be in an environment
where women's ambition was not only encouraged it was expected.
However, I haven't always found that to be the case.
Let me take you to an override a couple of months ago with a couple of classmates.
Maybe some of you in the room we're riding back home after a late night of BPL so
another night at the patio.
There's a female classmate and two close guy friends who are in a car.
And we started joking around about being single at the GSB,
some of you will also be able to relate to that.
[LAUGH] We were talking about how rough it can be, and
those questions that constantly plague us.
Should I bring a notebook on my ambiguity date at abako tomorrow?
>> [LAUGH]
>> Can one of you please create an Excel
tracker so I can know who's still single? >> [LAUGH]
>> But then all of a sudden
the conversation turned to something I didn't expect.
My female classmate turned to me and
said, Sadhna I don't think I'm going to keep working once I get married.
I doubt I'll find a husband who will support my career ambition, I was shocked.
This is Stanford's graduate school of business.
She went on to explain that because women are more nurturing,
it only makes sense that she is the only expected to take care of her kids.
And it turns out that my friend's experience is not an anomaly.
A recent Harvard business review study shows,
that single MBA women continue to downplay their ambition.
They continue to feel like there is a trade off between ambition and marriage.
On the first day of the MBA program these students were asked to state their career
preferences.
When they were told that their responses would be shared with
their male classmates, they said that they wanted to make $20,000 less.
They also said that they're less able and willing to lead.
Shouldn't this concern everybody in the room?
We want women to be smart, loving, nurturing, but never ambitious.
To be honest with you, I even hesitated to give a talk on female ambition.
Because I thought one of you in the room would hear it, and
think that I was too ambitious.
And then I realized, this is the problem.
Research also shows that women in the US spend 25
hours per week on household tasks.
Women that are working, and their male counterparts in the same
professional tier spend only ten hours per week on household tasks.
So what shows up in the homes and classrooms in Kenya,
actually shows up right here at the GSB.
Even in the United States, women carry the water.
No matter where we are, and no matter how rich,
how poor, there is a common theme.
All across the development curve, we fail to support women's ambition.
It's easy to hear this talk and to not realize the personal implications of it.
To be honest, I didn't realize it until it happened to me.
I recently found myself in a situation where I was told,
that there was no room for my ambition.
I was a three year relationship with a guy who I loved and wanted to marry.
Yet time and time again in the relationship, there were so
many subtle and some not so subtle signs that my ambition was a problem.
My partner's fear,
that because I wanted to have a career I wouldn't make a good mother.
Or thoughts in my own head, that if I just turn down my consulting offer after
business school, maybe I could make him love me more.
But then in that moment, I suddenly thought back to Dorothy, and
all of the girls who I'd met in Kenya.
I thought of my nine-year-old niece who loves Bill Nye the Science Gu,y and
wants to be a scientist when she grows up.
With their faces in my mind, I finally gathered the courage
to leave the relationship rather than to leave my ambition behind.
In writing this talk I finally have realized the answer to my question.
I finally know what we can do to help those girls in Kenya.
And it starts with making a change right here at the GSB.
If you're a woman, don't let someone else's expectations,
dictate your level of ambition.
Don't downplay your dreams for somebody else.
And if you're a man, you play a huge role in all this.
You have an amazing opportunity to help women realize their ambition.
Don't be afraid of ambitious women, we don't bite, I promise.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Date ambitious women, marry them,
celebrate their accomplishments.
In your future workplace, encourage women to be ambitious and support their careers.
And more tactically, when you're in a domestic partnership,
make sure you're taking on your share of child's care and household work.
Only then, when we all work together and balance the load,
can we make sure that women aren't the only ones carrying the water,
thank you. >> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]