if I was to ask you all to name for me
ten women from the Indian independence
struggle how many of you are going to be
able to do that with our flesh link to
Google or the help of the textbook then
we flip that question of it if I was to
ask him all to name for me ten men from
the Indian independence struggle how
many of you are going to be able to
write love the names at the tip of your
fingers my name is keeping to their
commands and I am here to talk about my
quest for truth they August 2001 and I
was a 13 year old girl sitting in class
night if you’re doing a mental
calculation of my age hold on stick with
my talk this is what important I sat in
my history class as my teacher were
giving us assignments topics that we had
to write 1,000 words reports on I went
to a nice ESC school where 80% of your
create came from the exams you wrote and
20% of your plays came from the projects
that you put together
so this was serious business we were 39
of us 10 o’clock 21 of us girls 80 of
them spoils I waited with bated breath I
was rolling on the 16 my teacher rattled
off names Bundy Jawaharlal Nehru
Mahatma Gandhi Adolf Hitler Winston
Churchill Benito Mussolini you had it it
was on that list when it came to my name
she had a lot of lead on Hamas cold the
former Secretary General of the United
Nations I was delighted at her
thoughtfulness because she was giving me
a leader that I once wanted to emulate
at some point in the future by joining
the UN but even as I wrote down his name
at the back of my notebook for recall
later I said on
comfortable but I didn’t know why I
continued in listening to the rest of
the nails and by the end of the list I
think I understood why I was
uncomfortable 39 leaders for 39 students
but 37 of those leaders were being just
too were female Indira Gandhi and Rani
Laxmi by the way although Hezbollah do
Chompy
when the bell rang in my teacher left
the class I followed her all the way to
the start school when I stopped trying I
asked her if I could change the name of
the leader that was allotted to me she
was surprised and also a little
uncomfortable
because if she allowed one student to do
that heaven knows there could be more
asking her for that favor and yet she
asked me why I wanted to do it choosing
to engage with me instead of dismissing
me altogether and I told her ma’am I
want to write about a woman leader she
smiled at me and told me that I could do
that but if I could find the name of the
deed of myself one with enough
information for a ninth grader to write
a thousand word report on and report
back to her the next morning with the
name challenge accepted I lied to the
library by the end of the day looked up
book after book after book set aside the
students of grade 9 and I was shocked at
what I found I found the belly two names
that were allotted to my class one hand
one sentence Indira Gandhi the first
woman to be the Prime Minister of India
the other name had a paradox Rani
urgently but when you see men they
popped up at you with almost every life
and some had chapters
three chapters and shocking that women
were invisible at that moment I wondered
if I was being scammed I mean for their
women in history or was I not being told
something nevertheless I persisted you
see at that time research was not like
student research as it is today
which is Google and Wikipedia back then
you had to throw yourself into your
textbooks and I really hope some of us
are still doing that by the next morning
with black circles under my eyes and a
sense of desperation in my heart I had
been Navy and I went to my teacher and
said I wanted to write about Margaret
Thatcher
she smiled said that I had help you will
know and she told me that she had made a
very very important decision that day
one that she would hope would come back
as knowledge to me in the future as
every other thirteen-year-old the
project was done was submitted and
forgotten but the question that she left
me with the question that we both of us
shared that morning came that to want me
in November last oh you see in November
last year I found myself staring an
article in the eye that talked about how
the Central Board for secondary
education had decided to do away with
the chapter that talked about the
struggle of women and caste Indian
history the same chapter chronicle the
narrative woman by the name without
getting you see she belonged to a
community in this very life that I stand
and speak to you today
called the era of our community which
was deprived of the privilege of wearing
an autotroph and if a woman at the time
had to wear a number cloth she had to
pay a tax
to do that but no Guinea would have none
of it she believed she had the inherent
right to decide what she wanted to wear
and so she went ahead and did just that
but the person in charge of collecting
taxes would have none of it either and
so in the ensuring battle she cut off
her breasts that presented it on a
plantain leaf to the collector her
active resistance now the evasion of
that chapter made me realize that my 13
year old self had been walking without
an answer and along with me the rest of
the world because you see the elation of
women in history is not a joke it’s not
something to be taken lightly women have
made the world what it is and we haven’t
given them they do have knowledge in
them for what they’ve done and for all
the many contributions that make life
convenient even today and doing that has
two terrible risks attached to it
number one we allow our girls and women
to grow into a generation of the future
without role models to look up to number
two we also silently tell our girls that
no matter what it is that they do they
will be elbowed out of the history books
because you see it’s history no room for
her stress many of the students here
might identify with something that I’m
going to talk about right now when we
stood in a classroom and with spacing
out and I hope no one is facing out
right now we find ourselves
dude link in our textbooks
subconsciously the first set of patterns
that come forth that was more different
than student spacing out every so often
but you’re later after reading Don Gani
story I found myself with a purpose for
the doodling that I would
dajin I decided that I would doodle
women back into history textbooks so
with that my integral an art project was
born and I chose to call it that
encyclopedia because I was all about
feminizing encyclopedias that had
already been captured by history and in
that process the journey of discovery
was tremendous the kind of story is the
kind of women the kind of contributions
that I stumble upon leave me stunned men
amazed even today I’m three tears to my
eyes the world knows of DNA as a
discovery by Watson and Crick they even
won a Nobel Prize for it but without the
contributions of rosalind Franklin who
sat and studied diffractions in an
extreme they wouldn’t have done it they
couldn’t have done it
and yet rosalind Franklin is that
forgotten did you have noted some
history textbooks or that Invisible
Woman completely ignored in every
narrative that Watson and Crick have the
American Red Cross was founded by Clara
Barton a woman but here’s an interesting
aspect of her story before she found in
the American retro she had thought that
there were so many problems in the
American education system in the 19th
century and all by herself she raised
four thousand dollars within
nineteenth-century she constituted a
board for the school that she was about
to set up the board was made of men and
they replaced her for being a woman we
all know Sarojini Naidu as a poet as the
nightingale effective and most of our
history textbooks continue to leave her
with just beans to evidence but how many
of us actually
that India has successfully been the
first among the few nations in the world
where men and women gain voting rights
at the same time how many of us know
that a woman also walked the salt march
and made salted defiance of the British
tax on salt
that woman was Sarah Jeanine idol Nam
Gainey of course Sen cyclopia would be
incomplete without a tribute to her and
all that she did as an act of resistance
Noor Inayat Khan is a name that’s
completely lost in any manager of the
Second World War
she was as fine taking on all kinds of
disguises all kinds of appearances that
never first second betrayed her true
identity order to support the Allies and
take on the SS in the end she was
tortured tortured right down to the very
minute but she never for a second gave
up on any of the signs that she was
reporting Rosa Parks when we talk of the
civil rights movement in the United
States the first name and perhaps
oftentimes the last name is Martin
Luther King but Rosa Parks was that
incendiary flame that set fire to that
whole movement refusing to alight the
first in Montgomery she decided that she
was not going to take segregation
anymore how do you first walk past the
cottage our tempo rooms in our city
ignoring the true narrative behind it
how many of us take pride in the
artistry and the craftsmanship that I’ve
tried the inside of our country has
exhibited the reason that those are
those crafts they thrive in the way that
they do was come live in each other
again a child right in the early 1900s
she was widowed and defied every norm
that society imposed on child Vidura
Slovak left home and moved to the met
roster
she was a freedom fighter standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with every man at a
time mega Terry momentum a woman who
took on the Britons
at a time when Kenya was coming under
colonial rule single-handedly she led
her entire community rise up led them
eventually to success while the British
tried to burn down the entire village I
could go on and on I could take you
through narratives that could leave you
with chairs or as stunned as I am even
as I recount these true told stories and
so every day I make it a commitment to
tell one story of one woman from across
the ages then now across seven
continents then now I first it was a
project or the selfishness the goal was
to be able to understand and learn more
stories for my service and in dueling
these women back somewhere I felt that
their stories would be inscribed at the
inside of my mind but the most
empowering narrative of all came to me a
week ago as a message in my Instagram
account but a young girl told me that a
doodle of a woman who came from her
community and her story helped her open
her parents eyes out to the truths that
she deserves to be educated that she
deserves to chase the career dreams that
she had harbored for a very long time
reading the story of that woman who was
otherwise aliens in history her parents
realized what they were about to do by
depriving her short at education simply
because she was a girl on some levels
I dream of a day where fan cycle of a
stem cyclopædia would know along
we needed where the illusion of woman
would not be such an easy strategy in
the histories that we write and until
then I will keep totally thank you [Applause]
ten women from the Indian independence
struggle how many of you are going to be
able to do that with our flesh link to
Google or the help of the textbook then
we flip that question of it if I was to
ask him all to name for me ten men from
the Indian independence struggle how
many of you are going to be able to
write love the names at the tip of your
fingers my name is keeping to their
commands and I am here to talk about my
quest for truth they August 2001 and I
was a 13 year old girl sitting in class
night if you’re doing a mental
calculation of my age hold on stick with
my talk this is what important I sat in
my history class as my teacher were
giving us assignments topics that we had
to write 1,000 words reports on I went
to a nice ESC school where 80% of your
create came from the exams you wrote and
20% of your plays came from the projects
that you put together
so this was serious business we were 39
of us 10 o’clock 21 of us girls 80 of
them spoils I waited with bated breath I
was rolling on the 16 my teacher rattled
off names Bundy Jawaharlal Nehru
Mahatma Gandhi Adolf Hitler Winston
Churchill Benito Mussolini you had it it
was on that list when it came to my name
she had a lot of lead on Hamas cold the
former Secretary General of the United
Nations I was delighted at her
thoughtfulness because she was giving me
a leader that I once wanted to emulate
at some point in the future by joining
the UN but even as I wrote down his name
at the back of my notebook for recall
later I said on
comfortable but I didn’t know why I
continued in listening to the rest of
the nails and by the end of the list I
think I understood why I was
uncomfortable 39 leaders for 39 students
but 37 of those leaders were being just
too were female Indira Gandhi and Rani
Laxmi by the way although Hezbollah do
Chompy
when the bell rang in my teacher left
the class I followed her all the way to
the start school when I stopped trying I
asked her if I could change the name of
the leader that was allotted to me she
was surprised and also a little
uncomfortable
because if she allowed one student to do
that heaven knows there could be more
asking her for that favor and yet she
asked me why I wanted to do it choosing
to engage with me instead of dismissing
me altogether and I told her ma’am I
want to write about a woman leader she
smiled at me and told me that I could do
that but if I could find the name of the
deed of myself one with enough
information for a ninth grader to write
a thousand word report on and report
back to her the next morning with the
name challenge accepted I lied to the
library by the end of the day looked up
book after book after book set aside the
students of grade 9 and I was shocked at
what I found I found the belly two names
that were allotted to my class one hand
one sentence Indira Gandhi the first
woman to be the Prime Minister of India
the other name had a paradox Rani
urgently but when you see men they
popped up at you with almost every life
and some had chapters
three chapters and shocking that women
were invisible at that moment I wondered
if I was being scammed I mean for their
women in history or was I not being told
something nevertheless I persisted you
see at that time research was not like
student research as it is today
which is Google and Wikipedia back then
you had to throw yourself into your
textbooks and I really hope some of us
are still doing that by the next morning
with black circles under my eyes and a
sense of desperation in my heart I had
been Navy and I went to my teacher and
said I wanted to write about Margaret
Thatcher
she smiled said that I had help you will
know and she told me that she had made a
very very important decision that day
one that she would hope would come back
as knowledge to me in the future as
every other thirteen-year-old the
project was done was submitted and
forgotten but the question that she left
me with the question that we both of us
shared that morning came that to want me
in November last oh you see in November
last year I found myself staring an
article in the eye that talked about how
the Central Board for secondary
education had decided to do away with
the chapter that talked about the
struggle of women and caste Indian
history the same chapter chronicle the
narrative woman by the name without
getting you see she belonged to a
community in this very life that I stand
and speak to you today
called the era of our community which
was deprived of the privilege of wearing
an autotroph and if a woman at the time
had to wear a number cloth she had to
pay a tax
to do that but no Guinea would have none
of it she believed she had the inherent
right to decide what she wanted to wear
and so she went ahead and did just that
but the person in charge of collecting
taxes would have none of it either and
so in the ensuring battle she cut off
her breasts that presented it on a
plantain leaf to the collector her
active resistance now the evasion of
that chapter made me realize that my 13
year old self had been walking without
an answer and along with me the rest of
the world because you see the elation of
women in history is not a joke it’s not
something to be taken lightly women have
made the world what it is and we haven’t
given them they do have knowledge in
them for what they’ve done and for all
the many contributions that make life
convenient even today and doing that has
two terrible risks attached to it
number one we allow our girls and women
to grow into a generation of the future
without role models to look up to number
two we also silently tell our girls that
no matter what it is that they do they
will be elbowed out of the history books
because you see it’s history no room for
her stress many of the students here
might identify with something that I’m
going to talk about right now when we
stood in a classroom and with spacing
out and I hope no one is facing out
right now we find ourselves
dude link in our textbooks
subconsciously the first set of patterns
that come forth that was more different
than student spacing out every so often
but you’re later after reading Don Gani
story I found myself with a purpose for
the doodling that I would
dajin I decided that I would doodle
women back into history textbooks so
with that my integral an art project was
born and I chose to call it that
encyclopedia because I was all about
feminizing encyclopedias that had
already been captured by history and in
that process the journey of discovery
was tremendous the kind of story is the
kind of women the kind of contributions
that I stumble upon leave me stunned men
amazed even today I’m three tears to my
eyes the world knows of DNA as a
discovery by Watson and Crick they even
won a Nobel Prize for it but without the
contributions of rosalind Franklin who
sat and studied diffractions in an
extreme they wouldn’t have done it they
couldn’t have done it
and yet rosalind Franklin is that
forgotten did you have noted some
history textbooks or that Invisible
Woman completely ignored in every
narrative that Watson and Crick have the
American Red Cross was founded by Clara
Barton a woman but here’s an interesting
aspect of her story before she found in
the American retro she had thought that
there were so many problems in the
American education system in the 19th
century and all by herself she raised
four thousand dollars within
nineteenth-century she constituted a
board for the school that she was about
to set up the board was made of men and
they replaced her for being a woman we
all know Sarojini Naidu as a poet as the
nightingale effective and most of our
history textbooks continue to leave her
with just beans to evidence but how many
of us actually
that India has successfully been the
first among the few nations in the world
where men and women gain voting rights
at the same time how many of us know
that a woman also walked the salt march
and made salted defiance of the British
tax on salt
that woman was Sarah Jeanine idol Nam
Gainey of course Sen cyclopia would be
incomplete without a tribute to her and
all that she did as an act of resistance
Noor Inayat Khan is a name that’s
completely lost in any manager of the
Second World War
she was as fine taking on all kinds of
disguises all kinds of appearances that
never first second betrayed her true
identity order to support the Allies and
take on the SS in the end she was
tortured tortured right down to the very
minute but she never for a second gave
up on any of the signs that she was
reporting Rosa Parks when we talk of the
civil rights movement in the United
States the first name and perhaps
oftentimes the last name is Martin
Luther King but Rosa Parks was that
incendiary flame that set fire to that
whole movement refusing to alight the
first in Montgomery she decided that she
was not going to take segregation
anymore how do you first walk past the
cottage our tempo rooms in our city
ignoring the true narrative behind it
how many of us take pride in the
artistry and the craftsmanship that I’ve
tried the inside of our country has
exhibited the reason that those are
those crafts they thrive in the way that
they do was come live in each other
again a child right in the early 1900s
she was widowed and defied every norm
that society imposed on child Vidura
Slovak left home and moved to the met
roster
she was a freedom fighter standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with every man at a
time mega Terry momentum a woman who
took on the Britons
at a time when Kenya was coming under
colonial rule single-handedly she led
her entire community rise up led them
eventually to success while the British
tried to burn down the entire village I
could go on and on I could take you
through narratives that could leave you
with chairs or as stunned as I am even
as I recount these true told stories and
so every day I make it a commitment to
tell one story of one woman from across
the ages then now across seven
continents then now I first it was a
project or the selfishness the goal was
to be able to understand and learn more
stories for my service and in dueling
these women back somewhere I felt that
their stories would be inscribed at the
inside of my mind but the most
empowering narrative of all came to me a
week ago as a message in my Instagram
account but a young girl told me that a
doodle of a woman who came from her
community and her story helped her open
her parents eyes out to the truths that
she deserves to be educated that she
deserves to chase the career dreams that
she had harbored for a very long time
reading the story of that woman who was
otherwise aliens in history her parents
realized what they were about to do by
depriving her short at education simply
because she was a girl on some levels
I dream of a day where fan cycle of a
stem cyclopædia would know along
we needed where the illusion of woman
would not be such an easy strategy in
the histories that we write and until
then I will keep totally thank you [Applause]
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