Transcriber: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
Zero point one seconds.
That's how long it takes me to make an impression on you.
And I don't have to do anything, I'm just standing here.
Now, the reason why your human brain
is able to size me up in a tenth of a second
is because you already have a lot of information about me.
Well, not exactly about me.
That would be creepy.
But information about somebody who looks like me.
So, the moment I came here, you thought,
"Oh, female, has brown skin, probably South Asian."
But it didn't just stop there.
It probably also thought,
"Oh, female.
I'd be overly emotional.
I'd not be very good at driving."
This is stereotyping.
And we do it all the time.
We are constantly categorizing people.
We are making assumptions, we are holding biases.
And we can't help it
because stereotyping is a way for our brains
to make quick decisions in our world.
They may not always be the right decisions,
but they'll be quick decisions.
So, I think I have reached a point in my life,
where I can say I have pretty much defied a lot of the stereotypes.
For starters, I'm a great driver.
And as a girl child growing up in India, in the 80s, in a middle-class family,
meant that while my education was very important,
my aspirations not so much.
I never grew up listening to, "Oh, you can be anything you want to be."
No, we had two choices.
You could either be a doctor or you could be an engineer,
because we were told
these are the two professions that will take you up in life,
that are your ticket to financial stability.
Well, guess what?
I didn't do either of them.
I went and got a PhD.
And then I didn't even do what all PhDs are supposed to do:
you know, go to a university, get a research position.
I actually left academic research, and I went and became an entrepreneur.
Now, for those who don't know what an entrepreneur is,
they are defined as people who first jump off a cliff
and then build a parachute as they're coming down.
So, most of them really don't know what they're doing.
But I do know this.
I am passionate about science,
and passionate about education,
especially science education for girls.
The reality is stereotypes are everywhere.
They permeate every part of our society.
But as a woman in science,
and as somebody who's now working in media,
and education,
what really fascinates me
is trying to understand
how the cultural stereotypes
influence our children and their career aspirations.
So, have you ever asked a child, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
It's an amazing question,
because sometimes they will come up with amazing answers.
And while this is a very fun question,
it is also a very revealing question,
because children's aspirations can tell us a lot about their family,
their economic class, their ethnicity,
and even the cultural stereotypes that they are growing up with.
And if you look at children's aspirations,
they usually base them on what their parents' jobs are,
what their friends are into, even what they watch on YouTube.
But very often, children's aspirations are based on their gender,
because traditional stereotypes of what boys and girls can and cannot do,
they very much still have a strong hold on our beliefs,
and we tend to pass it on to our children.
You just have to walk down a toy store aisle.
Well, nowadays, you will be scrolling on Amazon,
but you just have to walk down and see the toys in a toy store aisle,
to realize that girls love crafts, and boys love robots.
That narrative, it is still very much reinforced and marketed.
So, when girls see this,
they realize there are a lot of professions
that are not a good fit for them.
In fact, research has shown
that girls as young as six years old have already made the association
that fields like science and technology are for really, really smart people.
And these really, really smart people are all boys, they are not girls.
Science, technology, engineering, math,
now, these are the fields
that have suddenly become all the rage in education.
But, the way I see it,
these fields have always been in the news
for something else:
for having too many men and not enough women in them.
According to the United States Census Bureau,
in the 1970s, there used to be just 8 percent women in the STEM workforce,
just 8 percent.
In 2019, that number went up to 27 percent.
Wow!
In the last 50 years or so, that's a lot of progress we have made.
But if you really look a little deeper,
there are certain fields, like engineering and computer science,
where the trend, where the percentage,
is stagnant.
In fact, computer science, the numbers are actually shrinking.
So, when we look at this,
we realize that there are a lot of fields
that the girls are not going into,
and it has become a purpose
for our government, technology companies, toy companies, clothing manufacturers,
everybody is trying to increase participation of girls in STEM fields.
And for years, the numbers haven't budged.
Now, one argument has been, you know, maybe it's a matter of personal choice.
Girls are just not interested in these fields,
and there's nothing we can do about it.
Now, the argument, or the assumption with that argument,
is that if it's a matter of personal choice,
there is nothing else, there are no external factors,
affecting that personal choice.
Which may not exactly be true.
So, Sapna Cheryan, she’s a psychologist at the University of Washington,
and she did this experiment,
where she called in undergraduate students,
and she asked them to describe
what a typical computer scientist would look like.
So, how about we do this experiment here?
So, I want you all to think about what is the image that comes to your mind?
How would you describe a computer scientist? Right?
So, the students in that undergraduate study,
they described a typical computer scientist
as being male,
as being intelligent or a genius,
as being skinny, as being socially awkward,
and having not good personal hygiene,
although that point seems a little too specific.
So, I'm not sure what's going on there.
But, if, how many of you here had at least one word that was related,
or had in common with the students in that undergraduate study?
We can show a show of hands here.
There you go. There you go. Right?
So, if this is how you think a computer scientist looks like,
then you as a girl, or even a person of color,
you are bound to believe you're not going to fit in.
And there is a very, very high chance
that you are going to self-select
out of even considering computer science as a possible career choice.
Is that personal choice?
Of course, it is a personal choice.
But, the current narrative
that boys are better at computer science than girls,
that is a big part of what is influencing your personal choice.
And it is a false narrative, because that is just not true.
There was a point when women actually dominated computer science.
Some of the pioneers of computing
have been women.
Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Margaret Hamilton, Katherine Johnson,
these are just a few of the names.
In fact, if you look at the graph,
you will notice that there was a point when there were more women than men
in computer science.
And somewhere around 1984 is when the shift started happening.
The trend started going down.
So, what happened in 1984?
Turns out, 1984 was the year when personal computers hit the market.
And these were exclusively being marketed to the boys.
So, parents were more than twice as likely
to purchase computers for their boys than their girls as gifts.
So, more boys started getting access to it,
they started doing a lot more of the coding,
and this is where we are.
This is the culture we have created now.
So, when I look at this, I am thinking,
"Wow, this is a great example of how a shift has happened,
based on what we are telling the children,
and what they are thinking they are capable of doing,
and where they belong, and where they don't."
So, then my question became: Is it possible to change that?
And that is how, in 2017, I launched “Smore”.
This was the magazine where children were girls and boys.
They get to see the unseen faces, and hear the unheard stories,
of the women in STEM.
And I did this because I felt that when they see these stories,
when they see these women,
they are now, whether you are a boy or a girl who does not fit the stereotype,
you are now inspired,
and you now have this cour --
You have the courage, you have the confidence
to feel that --
even if you are not fitting the stereotype,
you have an interest, you have a passion, you will have a place in STEM.
So, the World Economic Forum actually predicts
that 65 percent of the children
who are in elementary school today,
65 percent,
they are going to be in jobs that do not even exist today.
So, how are we going to prepare these kids
for a future that we don't even know how it looks like?
I think, for now, the first things to do
would be to completely get rid of stereotypical associations
of talent, of brilliance, too specific gender or specific race,
so that all children, regardless of who they are,
have access to explore and excel in whatever it is that they want to do.
Both boys and girls are given equal opportunities
to be scientifically and digitally literate,
but also by knowing and realizing
that just learning how to code, or being really good at analyzing data,
that is not going to be enough for these children,
because in a world where cars are going to drive themselves,
and robots will be doing operations on us,
our children do not need to aspire to be just a doctor or just an engineer.
In fact, they need to aspire to become people with exceptional abilities
to adapt to changes.
They need to become people
who are really good at acquiring new skills,
who have a creative out-of-box mindset,
and who have really good social and emotional intelligence.
Because, the way I see it,
in a world that's going to be so tech centered,
our kids will really thrive
if we can make sure that they are equipped with skills
that are uniquely human.
Now, for the for the students who are sitting in the audience here today,
you are way past elementary school.
So, there are still a few things
I would like you to take away from this talk.
The first thing is to realize that stereotypes exist,
they are not going to go away any time soon.
In fact, they may never go away.
But, it is up to us to realize that we can rise above them.
We can understand, we can recognize them,
and we can try to not [let them] influence us.
I would also like you to use this talk
as a reminder to check in with your own biases,
and your own assumptions,
that you may have grown up with,
and realize that they don’t have to define you,
they don't have to stop you.
And remember, there are no rules about what you can and cannot do.
Do you want to be a scientist who also does stand-up comedy on the side?
For sure, you can do that.
And secondly, I want you all to have courage,
because as somebody who was growing up in India,
I was told to aspire to three things:
get a good education,
get married,
and end up in a nice, stable, well-paying job.
It wasn't until I was in my 40s that I realized that I want more.
And it took courage, and just courage,
to walk away from that stable job,
and go jump off a cliff --
you know, become the entrepreneur --
and start a publication
with zero knowledge of how the whole thing works.
So, it was just pure courage.
So, I would leave you with this:
Have courage to do your own thing,
rise above the stereotypes that define you.
And it may not always be easy,
but I can guarantee you that it will always be worth it.
Thank you.
(Applause)