[MUSIC]
I'd like everyone to close your eyes.
Now, bring to mind a picture of a computer engineer.
Maybe typing away at a terminal.
All right, you got it?
Okay, now open them.
I'm betting that what you thought of probably didn't look like this.
>> [LAUGH] >> Now,
it's true, I'm past the age of playing with dolls.
But when I saw that Mattel had created computer engineer Barbie,
I got super excited.
>> [LAUGH] >> I mean,
how cool is it that there's a mainstream toy
telling young girls that they can be successful in the field of computing.
I mean it even came with a super cool book that
was talking about how Barbie is creating a game to each kids to play with computers.
Except when Barbie's sister asked her if she can play the game Barbie's response?
No I'm just designing the game.
I'll need Steven and Brian to help me build it.
>> [LAUGH] >> What?
>> [LAUGH] >> You're telling me that computer
engineer Barbie can't even code?
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> On top of that,
she needs the guys to save the day a second time when her computer gets a virus
and crashes.
>> [LAUGH] >> My feeling of excitement became horror.
It's true, women are choosing not to study computer science.
But that choice it's not made in a vacuum.
It's a choice constrained by the reality of the world they live in,
a world that tells them from a young age, they do not belong.
Some of those signals can be overt
like the case of Barbie's laughable computer engineering career.
>> [LAUGH] >> But some of them can be more subtle,
like the case of Alana King, a black female computer science major.
Every time she went to the Stanford CS Building,
she would get asked, hey, are you lost?
Until finally she got so fed up with it that she wrote a blog post.
No, I'm not lost.
>> [LAUGH] >> What about the case of Isis Wenger.
When she was featured on a recruiting poster for
her companies software engineering team the ad blew up with comments.
But with people saying she must be a hired model and not an actual engineer.
These stereotypes surrounding us since birth can have powerful effects.
No matter how hard our conscious mind seek to reject them.
Stanford psychologist, Claude Steele, coined the term,
stereotype threat, to describe a situation in which an individual feels at risk
of conforming to a stereotype.
In his experiment, when African-Americans were asked to identify their race
before taking an aptitude test, they performed more poorly than white students.
However, if you remove this race question, all of a sudden,
that difference, all of it disappears.
And these findings have been replicated many times since.
In a test of sports ability, white men perform more poorly than black men.
However, you frame it as a test of sports intelligence,
all of a sudden that delta, flips.
If you remind Asian women of their Asianness before they take a math test,
they'll do better.
Remind them of their sex, and they'll do worse.
I hadn't heard about any of this research before I started my first job
as a computer engineer.
But if you had asked me what effect I thought stereotypes around women in
engineering could have on me, I would have said none.
I graduated first in my class.
I had several job offers and I actually like nerd culture.
>> [LAUGH] >> I mean I build robots for a hobby.
>> [LAUGH] >> I tell dorky Star Wars jokes,
even though I'm the only one that ever laughs at them.
>> [LAUGH] >> And
even though I was in the minority on my team, I felt welcomed from the first
day I started Until about a year into my job.
I hit a wall.
It was an assignment I just could not figure out.
And with each failed attempt to crack it,
I felt a little more of my confidence drain away.
Until suddenly, I found myself thinking the unthinkable.
Maybe I wasn't meant to be an engineer.
I thought about quitting every day.
I didn't realize it at the time, but that right there, was the power of stereotype.
It turned what should have been a tiny setback into proof that
every stereotype I'd internalized over my whole life was correct.
I wasn't good enough.
I didn't belong.
I knew that I had to ask for help.
And I knew it shouldn't be a big deal.
And my team was super collaborative, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
For me, asking for help it meant becoming like Barbie.
It meant admitting I had failed and
I wouldn't just be failing myself I'd be failing women everywhere.
As one of the few of us, I stood for all of us.
So I couldn't just be good, I had to be exceptional so
that maybe I could disprove the stereotype that women didn't belong in engineering.
Try taking that weight on your shoulders as a 22 year old.
I've read research by Carnegie Mellon, at Carnegie Mellon, with students there,
and the experiences reported by women were eerily similar to my own.
Many came in as stellar math and science students.
But as they ran into challenges with their introductory programming courses.
They, too, began to believe the voices they'd once rejected.
Voices that told them they'd only been admitted because they were women.
It didn't matter that they eventually mastered the material.
They couldn't get it out of their heads.
Of the women interviewed half would drop out of the program, but
of those dropouts, half were on the honor roll.
These women aren't the only ones paying the cost here.
Businesses are missing out too.
Companies that have more gender diversity Have greater profits and
greater sales revenue than their competitors.
Studies show that teams that include women are more innovative and
more productive than those that don't.
So if we want to improve our business outcomes,
keep women from dropping out of these programs.
Let's start by addressing the stereotypes.
That are turning off not only women, but anyone else who falls
outside of the narrow definition, we what it means to be a Turkey.
To other women out there, please don't make the mistake of believing
you're the only one struggling with these feelings.
Ask for help when did, get past what you are stuck on.
And I guarantee one day you'll be that person for someone else.
So, those of you in the majority, we need your help too.
Understand that even under the near confidence
a person that you could reach out to is struggling against an invisible current.
That they may not even know is there.
Know that even your simple nudge of encouragement can make all the difference,
that's how I got past my wall.
And finally, to everyone else, all I ask is this.
Be more mindful of the stereotypes that you Unintentionally propagate.
think about what it really means when you tell someone, of course,
you're going to get into that program, you're a woman, or
what you're really saying, when you tell someone, you don't look like an engineer.
The power of stereotype comes from repetition over, and over again.
Until the idea is ingrained within our culture.
Which means we're all guilty of contributing to the problem.
To quote from a fellow TED speaker, the problem with our stereotypes around
computer scientists,it's not that they're wrong, it's just that they're incomplete.
There is space here for mathletes and athletes, cake bakers and robot makers.
>> [LAUGH] >> Let's start
by widening our definition of what it means to be a computer scientist.
So the next time you close your eyes,
you can imagine Barbie coding alongside Steven and Brian.
And then together, we can all build a future in which we can.
Live long and prosper.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]