Teaneck Pfeiffer the professor of
professional behavior at the University
of Warwick in London recently conducted
an experiment where she asked a group of
both men and women to ask to drop what
they thought an effective leader looks
like here’s what they drew now these
images provide us with a window in this
into the subconscious stereotypes that
we all possess one of the obvious
commonalities here is that all of these
drawings are men now this doesn’t mean
that all of us think that men are
somehow better leaders than women it
just means that the majority of leaders
we’ve seen throughout our lives have
been male from a young age girls are
raised with a number of stereotypes that
shape their personalities and futures a
few years ago a group of researchers
conducted an experiment based on a
playground fire pool while boys were
encouraged to go down the pool by
themselves girls are often cautioned and
when they insisted I’m going down the
pole parents are most likely to help
them through instances like this we see
how often girls are taught not to take
risks additionally our language with
young girls often includes things like
oh you’re so smart or you’re so clever
well with boys we say if you just did
this or you just did that well this may
seem small what this teaches our girls
is that these smart clever personality
traits are somehow permanent and when
they face a challenge that questions
these traits they’re quick to lose hope
in themselves while boys are taught to
persevere and come up with new solutions
to problems this can be seen directly in
the fact that 31% of girls in elementary
school say that they are good at math
and in middle school that number drops
to 18% now this is shocking at all but
it seems that US has its own special
problem fifteen-year-old girls around
the world outperform boys in science
except for in the United States
Britain and Canada now you would think
that the US would be at the forefront of
empowering women in stem but as we can
see the numbers tell a different story
in America male students were more
likely than female students to take
engineering and computer science courses
and enrolled in AP Computer Science a at
a much higher rate 81% to 19 percent now
you may be thinking why does this matter
at all how does the number of women in
stem affect Society
well let’s take a look at the numbers by
the year 2020 there will be 1.4 million
jobs available in the tech industry at
our current graduation rate only 1/3 of
these positions will be trip will be
filled by American trained computer
scientists women make up 60% of our
undergraduate population but only 20% of
computer science majors now if we took a
HEC hypothetical class of 100 computer
science majors there will be 20 women
and 80 men so if we just took women up
to their appropriate portion proportion
which is 60%
there would be 120 women for those 80
men meaning the numbers would double
which would be timely considering the
number of jobs is going to be booming so
now that we’ve established the need for
the women in stem let’s talk about how
it is for the actual woman in stem
Hollywood has done a fantastic job at
Pech waiting the stereotype of the mean
overly aggressive female boss and in the
male-dominated field often times women
don’t want to be this overly aggressive
person who shouts at people and so they
shy away from this field additionally
many women in stem face harassment
assault and are oftentimes just not
listed
because there are so few of them now the
impact of the media is felt well beyond
women in stem Mean Girls and sissy
fights are stereotypes that we see every
single day they made a movie based on it
come on now what does this teach our
girls and boys about women even now with
female role models emerging in Hollywood
there are still subconscious sexist
stereotypes
let’s take wonder woman for an example
in the movie she’s portrayed as a strong
independent woman but when we just stop
and take a look at what she’s wearing we
see how she’s quite obviously still
sexualized in fact studies have shown
that character female characters in
g-rated movies are just as likely to be
wearing revealing clothing as in r-rated
movies now it’s up to us to reverse this
trend in history to change the idea in
society that a courageous woman who is
strong enough to bring up her chilling
story of sexual assault will not be
brushed aside as a political pawn it’s
up to us to stop the continuous
stereotyping of women as weak and teach
them to be strong and independent
without being mean or overly aggressive
there are a large number of women role
models in stem Sheryl Sandberg CEO of
Facebook Mary T Barra CEO of General
Motors and Ginni Rometty CEO of IBM and
the list goes on the unfortunate truth
is as teens we don’t often hear about
these women because they’re not
traditionally attractive they’re not
what the media wants to report on as I
was writing this speech
I was thinking to myself who are the
things people that I know in stem and of
course I thought of a few women but
mostly it was men and for this to be
something that I have studied so
passionately and for me to be able to
name so few women just like exemplify to
me the disparity between men and women
in stem in the media now these
stereotypes often deter you girls from
pursuing careers in stem and we need to
provide that extra support to them this
for at least meets the idea of equity
versus equality although all of us boys
and girls may be given equal
opportunities we’re not all raised with
the same idea that stem is good or that
it’s even an option so I implore you to
teach young girls to take risks to fail
and to support them for me as a freshman
I join robotics and that was a risk the
fact is that even here at Saratoga High
the robotics program the ratio of girls
to boys is still one two three and so of
course on my first stay there I show up
and the first thing I fear is not what
to do with the robot is oh go to work on
engineering notebook and my response is
if I wanted to work on a notebook I
wouldn’t have signed up for robotics a
few months later I had a similar
incident but this time after it occurred
the male student came and apologized to
me and he hadn’t realized what he meant
we all possessed the subconscious
stereotypes that perceived girls is only
being able to do girly things that we
couldn’t possibly be capable of doing
something like build a robot so it’s up
to us to empower and educate our girls
to reverse these stereotypes and rather
than stopping them from falling to teach
them how to get back up thank you [Applause]
professional behavior at the University
of Warwick in London recently conducted
an experiment where she asked a group of
both men and women to ask to drop what
they thought an effective leader looks
like here’s what they drew now these
images provide us with a window in this
into the subconscious stereotypes that
we all possess one of the obvious
commonalities here is that all of these
drawings are men now this doesn’t mean
that all of us think that men are
somehow better leaders than women it
just means that the majority of leaders
we’ve seen throughout our lives have
been male from a young age girls are
raised with a number of stereotypes that
shape their personalities and futures a
few years ago a group of researchers
conducted an experiment based on a
playground fire pool while boys were
encouraged to go down the pool by
themselves girls are often cautioned and
when they insisted I’m going down the
pole parents are most likely to help
them through instances like this we see
how often girls are taught not to take
risks additionally our language with
young girls often includes things like
oh you’re so smart or you’re so clever
well with boys we say if you just did
this or you just did that well this may
seem small what this teaches our girls
is that these smart clever personality
traits are somehow permanent and when
they face a challenge that questions
these traits they’re quick to lose hope
in themselves while boys are taught to
persevere and come up with new solutions
to problems this can be seen directly in
the fact that 31% of girls in elementary
school say that they are good at math
and in middle school that number drops
to 18% now this is shocking at all but
it seems that US has its own special
problem fifteen-year-old girls around
the world outperform boys in science
except for in the United States
Britain and Canada now you would think
that the US would be at the forefront of
empowering women in stem but as we can
see the numbers tell a different story
in America male students were more
likely than female students to take
engineering and computer science courses
and enrolled in AP Computer Science a at
a much higher rate 81% to 19 percent now
you may be thinking why does this matter
at all how does the number of women in
stem affect Society
well let’s take a look at the numbers by
the year 2020 there will be 1.4 million
jobs available in the tech industry at
our current graduation rate only 1/3 of
these positions will be trip will be
filled by American trained computer
scientists women make up 60% of our
undergraduate population but only 20% of
computer science majors now if we took a
HEC hypothetical class of 100 computer
science majors there will be 20 women
and 80 men so if we just took women up
to their appropriate portion proportion
which is 60%
there would be 120 women for those 80
men meaning the numbers would double
which would be timely considering the
number of jobs is going to be booming so
now that we’ve established the need for
the women in stem let’s talk about how
it is for the actual woman in stem
Hollywood has done a fantastic job at
Pech waiting the stereotype of the mean
overly aggressive female boss and in the
male-dominated field often times women
don’t want to be this overly aggressive
person who shouts at people and so they
shy away from this field additionally
many women in stem face harassment
assault and are oftentimes just not
listed
because there are so few of them now the
impact of the media is felt well beyond
women in stem Mean Girls and sissy
fights are stereotypes that we see every
single day they made a movie based on it
come on now what does this teach our
girls and boys about women even now with
female role models emerging in Hollywood
there are still subconscious sexist
stereotypes
let’s take wonder woman for an example
in the movie she’s portrayed as a strong
independent woman but when we just stop
and take a look at what she’s wearing we
see how she’s quite obviously still
sexualized in fact studies have shown
that character female characters in
g-rated movies are just as likely to be
wearing revealing clothing as in r-rated
movies now it’s up to us to reverse this
trend in history to change the idea in
society that a courageous woman who is
strong enough to bring up her chilling
story of sexual assault will not be
brushed aside as a political pawn it’s
up to us to stop the continuous
stereotyping of women as weak and teach
them to be strong and independent
without being mean or overly aggressive
there are a large number of women role
models in stem Sheryl Sandberg CEO of
Facebook Mary T Barra CEO of General
Motors and Ginni Rometty CEO of IBM and
the list goes on the unfortunate truth
is as teens we don’t often hear about
these women because they’re not
traditionally attractive they’re not
what the media wants to report on as I
was writing this speech
I was thinking to myself who are the
things people that I know in stem and of
course I thought of a few women but
mostly it was men and for this to be
something that I have studied so
passionately and for me to be able to
name so few women just like exemplify to
me the disparity between men and women
in stem in the media now these
stereotypes often deter you girls from
pursuing careers in stem and we need to
provide that extra support to them this
for at least meets the idea of equity
versus equality although all of us boys
and girls may be given equal
opportunities we’re not all raised with
the same idea that stem is good or that
it’s even an option so I implore you to
teach young girls to take risks to fail
and to support them for me as a freshman
I join robotics and that was a risk the
fact is that even here at Saratoga High
the robotics program the ratio of girls
to boys is still one two three and so of
course on my first stay there I show up
and the first thing I fear is not what
to do with the robot is oh go to work on
engineering notebook and my response is
if I wanted to work on a notebook I
wouldn’t have signed up for robotics a
few months later I had a similar
incident but this time after it occurred
the male student came and apologized to
me and he hadn’t realized what he meant
we all possessed the subconscious
stereotypes that perceived girls is only
being able to do girly things that we
couldn’t possibly be capable of doing
something like build a robot so it’s up
to us to empower and educate our girls
to reverse these stereotypes and rather
than stopping them from falling to teach
them how to get back up thank you [Applause]
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