[Applause]
when I was about 8 years old
we were on vacation with my family in
the mountains and we were coming home
from dinner late one night and was this
beautiful starry sky above us and my dad
stopped us to show us some
constellations and it was it was cold it
was rainy but he was so excited and so
we didn’t mind too much as he started
explaining about this is the great wagon
and then he showed us the Cassiopeia
which is this w shaped Star
constellation that many of you have
probably already seen because it’s
really easy to spot and just below the
Cassiopeia there’s this tiny smudge of
light and I saw that tiny smudge and it
wasn’t moving and so I thought what is
that it’s not a star it’s not a planet
and I had a telescope with me up on that
mountaintop this is what I would have
seen we didn’t have a telescope like I
said so we I relied on my dad to explain
that this is actually the Andromeda
galaxy the only other major galaxy that
you can see with your bare eye in the
night sky and I thought oh that’s really
yeah so it’s a pretty picture but wait
you’re old me went oh wait other
galaxies what do you mean other galaxies
because I was eight so I knew that we
live on a round roundish planet called
Earth and that there are other planets
in our solar system that to our
knowledge don’t have life on them we
don’t know for sure but we think they
don’t and I knew that our solar system
is somewhere centered on the outer
skirts of the Milky Way but for some
reason I had never realized that we have
more than one galaxies in our universe
and they’re really really really far
away so that was a huge sudden drastic
expansion of an eight-year-olds universe
right there
and with that expansion came all these
questions more stars more planets are in
those galaxies right now and we don’t
know what’s there because there are 2.3
million light-years away so the light
we’re seeing is already 2.3 million
years old so we don’t even know there
could be other life out there right now
having TEDx conferences there guys I
don’t know and I’m I’m 34 now and I
still don’t know but I’ve practiced this
part of my talk so many times and it
gets me really really excited and I get
goosebumps every single time because all
these questions are so existential and
at the core of our existence who else is
out there why are we even here and as
the years went by and I grew older that
fascination for space that was laid that
foundation was laid at that moment that
turn into when somebody asked me instead
what do you want to be when you grow up
I would say I want to be an astronaut
and I would like to know I can see all
the way to the back so I would like to
know who else here today I wanted to be
an astronaut when they were a little kid
or wants to be once a day so it looks to
me as though it’s all over your head and
that’s quite a few and I know some of
you so that’s cool well a lot of us
humans share that but yeah that passion
and that drive to go into space and the
first person to do so was you lega
garden in 1961 and a lot has changed
since those fifty almost 60 years we
have our news and color now that’s
really cool but still only about 550
people have flown into space and that’s
about the size of the audience here
today which is perfect and trying to
look so I would say walking in I
registered it’s about I would say 40%
female audience yeah I’m gonna go with
that so it’s about it we have 40%
females in the audience here but of the
550 people who’ve gone to space only 65
of them have been women a few of them
European and none of the
germán and that bothered a lady called
Exodia Kessler who decided to rock the
boat of the all-male German astronaut
corps by starting her own independent
astronaut selection program last year to
find the first female German astronaut
and over 400 highly qualified women
applied and a rigorous and extensive
selection procedure whittled them down
from four hundred to one hundred and
twenty two ninety two thirty two eight
two six to two and my colleague Nicola
Bauman and I will begin training next
week actually our two weeks and I’m
really really excited about this and one
of us will hopefully fly to the
International Space Station in 2020 and
while I’m really really excited at the
chance of flying into space and seeing
the Earth from above of watching a
sunrise every 90 minutes of seeing the
blues and the greens and the clouds and
the thin frail atmosphere the
eight-year-old girl inside of me is a
bit surprised at the fact that it’s 2017
and I can still be the first German
female in space and why is that why have
we not had a German female astronauts
and part of that is because human
spaceflight while undoubtedly
scientifically valuable and in my
opinion culturally indispensable is
really expensive and so it’s good that
not all of you raise your hand because
we don’t we can’t pay all of you to go
out there and another reason is that to
become an astronaut you need a
background in a certain area and that’s
math IT
Natural Sciences technology engineering
what we call in Germany the mint fields
or in the u.s. the STEM fields and those
are all areas where we have an
under-representation of women and we
have an under-representation of teenage
girls and of little girls and that is
what I want to talk about a little bit
today why do these girls go missing
that’s what they’re called in Germany
missing mint girls
and some people have spent some time on
that and develop programs because they
found that these girls while they are
interested when they’re younger they
lose confidence in themselves in these
areas as they wrote older it so it’s you
you start empowering these girls and say
yes you can you can do it but I think
it’s not just a question the girl is
maybe not just asking the question can I
do it
I think she’s maybe asking a much deeper
question should I even be doing this and
because I have two daughters therefore
in their six when we redecorated her
rooms their rooms they were in the space
phase they were really interested for
rockets drawing them building them
starting launching them in her backyard
and we wanted to get some astronaut wall
tattoos for their walls and we sat down
at the computer and we found this so
they didn’t really like that selection
and now we have a Disney princess on the
wall which is fine too but you know not
really what we want it and my daughter
started to read and I thought oh cool I
can get her one of these beginners books
you know and I’ll find one on space and
I found one on space which is cool
because there’s a rocket and there’s
lots of other adventurous stuff going on
in that book but it says super strong
stories for boys hmm I can buy the book
she’ll think I’m nuts because she’s a
girl so luckily the author awful word a
book for girls and look it’s fantastic
dainty little stories with fairy ferrets
lots of fairy dust and horses and I read
inside there’s pirates but they want to
be really nice pirates it’s not really
adventurous and so we have on the ones
like we have the super strong story is
about the adventures for boys and on the
other side we have the stories for the
girls and trust me when I say I spent
about three seconds on google finding
these examples and there’s many many
many many more but I don’t have enough
time so what is the fade to a girl that
is interested in the other side what
does it say to a boy who’s interested in
the other side we can talk about that
too but I’m going to focus on the
missing mint girls where are they and
why are they leaving and what can we do
to change that and because I think it’s
not enough to tell the girls oh you can
do it just believe in yourself you can
do it it’s not enough
because when a flower doesn’t bloom you
fix the environment in which the flower
grows you don’t fix the flower and how
can we fix it how can we fix this
environment what can we do and I think
what we can do is we can have yeah have
a little bit of focus on our own words
and our own actions the reason why I
think that is this is the 11 year old
meat we were on vacation in France again
on vacation vacation and we wanted to
light a fire and another dad called out
to us and said kids come on from over
here we’ll start the fire over here and
we all ran up to them and he looks at me
and says oh not you girls don’t light a
fire and this came from a very very nice
gentle good-natured man who has no idea
he does not remember that he said that
to me but I remembered that moment when
I was sitting in front of the fireplace
of her new home two years ago wondering
why it felt so uncomfortable for me to
sit there with a match trying to light a
fire I was really shocked because I’m 32
and I’m where I was 32 and I’m really
confident but I was feeling weird in
front of that fireplace and my daughter
brought home this true or false
questionnaire we’re in the third third
row from the bottom it says I like math
and she crossed false how dare she
in my house as long as you put your feet
under my table you like math and she was
sleeping at the time when I found this
and so I my instinct was to run up to
her and I hear but you never wake a
sleeping baby and so I waited till she
opened her eyes the next morning and I
casually moved over and said okay so
what’s up here why don’t you like math
and she said you know I’m not good at
it’s like she’s in first grade she adds
she subtracts she sells ass and cakes at
a process she divides a bag of gummy
bears equally among a family of four why
does the kid think she can’t do math and
so I waited a little bit because I may
see you eager here but I try to be more
relaxed at home but it didn’t go away
and a couple of weeks later I talked to
the teacher and I said listen I I don’t
know what’s going on and I don’t know
how to fix it
because I love math I do math prefer all
the time and I could but I can’t tell
her I love math now you do too it
doesn’t work like that what do I do and
the teacher said you know what’s really
weird all the girls all the girls in
class and at 16 they’re sitting there
saying oh we can’t do math and she
doesn’t know either we don’t know where
it’s coming from and she’s working on it
but it takes a lot of work why is that
there and I think I wonder why it’s
there in a culture where it’s kind of
coy and cute to say oh she’s a girl she
doesn’t need to know it it’s math let’s
look let’s let men do the taxes the men
pay the bills we’ll design a shirt that
says in math I’m just decor and that
shirt you’re laughing it’s sold out it’s
sold out
it’s actually sad and if I think about
it too long I’ll start crying and we
don’t want that so I’ll move on and so
it’s not just their words it’s also her
actions I read a study again they make
me very upset these studies that in
German households and this holds true
for in turn bulbulay unfortunately girls
spend more time doing chores than boys
because boys mow the lawn with dad and
girls do the dishes in the laundry with
mom and these are the more
time-consuming tasks so there we’re
setting them up for the pattern that
we’re trying to change there’s so much
discussion on how do we get women to
stay in the workforce and we need the
men to do more but we’re passing on a
completely different message to our
girls and our sons and daughters and
then what else we’re passing along with
that is we’re giving them a wage gap to
go along with it because another study
found that eight-year-old boys get 20%
more allowance than eight-year-old girls
that is messed up that is really messed
up and so initially when I read these
studies I of course immediately did an
assessment of her own household I felt
really good because I do the shopping in
the cooking but my husband vacuums and
does the laundry thus proving you don’t
need a second X chromosome to turn on a
non washing machine and you can imagine
the look on my admittedly somewhat smug
face when I realized I have never known
alone in my life
and it really needs mowing because this
is what it looked like yesterday morning
I can’t tell you why I haven’t but if no
ambitions to do so and that is a problem
because with our actions with what we do
and what we don’t do we are
subconsciously passing on the message
that moms don’t mow the lawn and I asked
all of my mom friends you guys more the
lawn no we don’t and part of the reason
why we don’t mow the lawn is and don’t
watch on our words and don’t pay
attention to our actions because it can
be uncomfortable to do so every single
time I talk about this and now I because
I wear the blue polo I get asked about
this a lot is what can we do and I talk
about these questions and how it’s
sometimes you have these sexist remarks
going on or these little jokes or the
cute comments about how girls can’t do
math and it makes people uncomfortable
it really makes people uncomfortable
because that means that you’re sort of
pointing a finger and nobody wants to be
the annoying gender watchdog I don’t
want to be the annoying gender watch
duck I also don’t really want you like
mowing or long and because I’m already
flying into space
isn’t that enough I don’t want a mower
long to my husband can just do that but
I think it’s really important that we
all look at what we say and what we do
because with the future we’re heading to
we cannot afford to have things stay the
same as they are right now we can’t
afford to have her kids growing up in a
world where they’re slamming into gender
stereotypical books bookshelves and
elementary school wage gaps that’s not
possible
it’s not acceptable I don’t want that I
don’t think either you do neither do you
and so initially this is where I wanted
to end my talk but then I decided that
I’m being ridiculous
and so yesterday
for the first time in my life I’m proud
to say that a moment long part of it at
least because then I went inside to
practice my talk for today and I even
had a little helper who came outside
because she saw me outside so she came
outside – and helped and I’m fully aware
that this was not one of those dromeda
galaxy moments for her most likely it
was not but at least my husband since
thanks to TEDx Hamburg because now I
more the world and what I want to end
with now is I think that if all of us
here just take a little time to think on
our words and our actions we can all
contribute we can all contribute to
getting more women into space and
hopefully beyond one small step at a
time
[Applause]
when I was about 8 years old
we were on vacation with my family in
the mountains and we were coming home
from dinner late one night and was this
beautiful starry sky above us and my dad
stopped us to show us some
constellations and it was it was cold it
was rainy but he was so excited and so
we didn’t mind too much as he started
explaining about this is the great wagon
and then he showed us the Cassiopeia
which is this w shaped Star
constellation that many of you have
probably already seen because it’s
really easy to spot and just below the
Cassiopeia there’s this tiny smudge of
light and I saw that tiny smudge and it
wasn’t moving and so I thought what is
that it’s not a star it’s not a planet
and I had a telescope with me up on that
mountaintop this is what I would have
seen we didn’t have a telescope like I
said so we I relied on my dad to explain
that this is actually the Andromeda
galaxy the only other major galaxy that
you can see with your bare eye in the
night sky and I thought oh that’s really
yeah so it’s a pretty picture but wait
you’re old me went oh wait other
galaxies what do you mean other galaxies
because I was eight so I knew that we
live on a round roundish planet called
Earth and that there are other planets
in our solar system that to our
knowledge don’t have life on them we
don’t know for sure but we think they
don’t and I knew that our solar system
is somewhere centered on the outer
skirts of the Milky Way but for some
reason I had never realized that we have
more than one galaxies in our universe
and they’re really really really far
away so that was a huge sudden drastic
expansion of an eight-year-olds universe
right there
and with that expansion came all these
questions more stars more planets are in
those galaxies right now and we don’t
know what’s there because there are 2.3
million light-years away so the light
we’re seeing is already 2.3 million
years old so we don’t even know there
could be other life out there right now
having TEDx conferences there guys I
don’t know and I’m I’m 34 now and I
still don’t know but I’ve practiced this
part of my talk so many times and it
gets me really really excited and I get
goosebumps every single time because all
these questions are so existential and
at the core of our existence who else is
out there why are we even here and as
the years went by and I grew older that
fascination for space that was laid that
foundation was laid at that moment that
turn into when somebody asked me instead
what do you want to be when you grow up
I would say I want to be an astronaut
and I would like to know I can see all
the way to the back so I would like to
know who else here today I wanted to be
an astronaut when they were a little kid
or wants to be once a day so it looks to
me as though it’s all over your head and
that’s quite a few and I know some of
you so that’s cool well a lot of us
humans share that but yeah that passion
and that drive to go into space and the
first person to do so was you lega
garden in 1961 and a lot has changed
since those fifty almost 60 years we
have our news and color now that’s
really cool but still only about 550
people have flown into space and that’s
about the size of the audience here
today which is perfect and trying to
look so I would say walking in I
registered it’s about I would say 40%
female audience yeah I’m gonna go with
that so it’s about it we have 40%
females in the audience here but of the
550 people who’ve gone to space only 65
of them have been women a few of them
European and none of the
germán and that bothered a lady called
Exodia Kessler who decided to rock the
boat of the all-male German astronaut
corps by starting her own independent
astronaut selection program last year to
find the first female German astronaut
and over 400 highly qualified women
applied and a rigorous and extensive
selection procedure whittled them down
from four hundred to one hundred and
twenty two ninety two thirty two eight
two six to two and my colleague Nicola
Bauman and I will begin training next
week actually our two weeks and I’m
really really excited about this and one
of us will hopefully fly to the
International Space Station in 2020 and
while I’m really really excited at the
chance of flying into space and seeing
the Earth from above of watching a
sunrise every 90 minutes of seeing the
blues and the greens and the clouds and
the thin frail atmosphere the
eight-year-old girl inside of me is a
bit surprised at the fact that it’s 2017
and I can still be the first German
female in space and why is that why have
we not had a German female astronauts
and part of that is because human
spaceflight while undoubtedly
scientifically valuable and in my
opinion culturally indispensable is
really expensive and so it’s good that
not all of you raise your hand because
we don’t we can’t pay all of you to go
out there and another reason is that to
become an astronaut you need a
background in a certain area and that’s
math IT
Natural Sciences technology engineering
what we call in Germany the mint fields
or in the u.s. the STEM fields and those
are all areas where we have an
under-representation of women and we
have an under-representation of teenage
girls and of little girls and that is
what I want to talk about a little bit
today why do these girls go missing
that’s what they’re called in Germany
missing mint girls
and some people have spent some time on
that and develop programs because they
found that these girls while they are
interested when they’re younger they
lose confidence in themselves in these
areas as they wrote older it so it’s you
you start empowering these girls and say
yes you can you can do it but I think
it’s not just a question the girl is
maybe not just asking the question can I
do it
I think she’s maybe asking a much deeper
question should I even be doing this and
because I have two daughters therefore
in their six when we redecorated her
rooms their rooms they were in the space
phase they were really interested for
rockets drawing them building them
starting launching them in her backyard
and we wanted to get some astronaut wall
tattoos for their walls and we sat down
at the computer and we found this so
they didn’t really like that selection
and now we have a Disney princess on the
wall which is fine too but you know not
really what we want it and my daughter
started to read and I thought oh cool I
can get her one of these beginners books
you know and I’ll find one on space and
I found one on space which is cool
because there’s a rocket and there’s
lots of other adventurous stuff going on
in that book but it says super strong
stories for boys hmm I can buy the book
she’ll think I’m nuts because she’s a
girl so luckily the author awful word a
book for girls and look it’s fantastic
dainty little stories with fairy ferrets
lots of fairy dust and horses and I read
inside there’s pirates but they want to
be really nice pirates it’s not really
adventurous and so we have on the ones
like we have the super strong story is
about the adventures for boys and on the
other side we have the stories for the
girls and trust me when I say I spent
about three seconds on google finding
these examples and there’s many many
many many more but I don’t have enough
time so what is the fade to a girl that
is interested in the other side what
does it say to a boy who’s interested in
the other side we can talk about that
too but I’m going to focus on the
missing mint girls where are they and
why are they leaving and what can we do
to change that and because I think it’s
not enough to tell the girls oh you can
do it just believe in yourself you can
do it it’s not enough
because when a flower doesn’t bloom you
fix the environment in which the flower
grows you don’t fix the flower and how
can we fix it how can we fix this
environment what can we do and I think
what we can do is we can have yeah have
a little bit of focus on our own words
and our own actions the reason why I
think that is this is the 11 year old
meat we were on vacation in France again
on vacation vacation and we wanted to
light a fire and another dad called out
to us and said kids come on from over
here we’ll start the fire over here and
we all ran up to them and he looks at me
and says oh not you girls don’t light a
fire and this came from a very very nice
gentle good-natured man who has no idea
he does not remember that he said that
to me but I remembered that moment when
I was sitting in front of the fireplace
of her new home two years ago wondering
why it felt so uncomfortable for me to
sit there with a match trying to light a
fire I was really shocked because I’m 32
and I’m where I was 32 and I’m really
confident but I was feeling weird in
front of that fireplace and my daughter
brought home this true or false
questionnaire we’re in the third third
row from the bottom it says I like math
and she crossed false how dare she
in my house as long as you put your feet
under my table you like math and she was
sleeping at the time when I found this
and so I my instinct was to run up to
her and I hear but you never wake a
sleeping baby and so I waited till she
opened her eyes the next morning and I
casually moved over and said okay so
what’s up here why don’t you like math
and she said you know I’m not good at
it’s like she’s in first grade she adds
she subtracts she sells ass and cakes at
a process she divides a bag of gummy
bears equally among a family of four why
does the kid think she can’t do math and
so I waited a little bit because I may
see you eager here but I try to be more
relaxed at home but it didn’t go away
and a couple of weeks later I talked to
the teacher and I said listen I I don’t
know what’s going on and I don’t know
how to fix it
because I love math I do math prefer all
the time and I could but I can’t tell
her I love math now you do too it
doesn’t work like that what do I do and
the teacher said you know what’s really
weird all the girls all the girls in
class and at 16 they’re sitting there
saying oh we can’t do math and she
doesn’t know either we don’t know where
it’s coming from and she’s working on it
but it takes a lot of work why is that
there and I think I wonder why it’s
there in a culture where it’s kind of
coy and cute to say oh she’s a girl she
doesn’t need to know it it’s math let’s
look let’s let men do the taxes the men
pay the bills we’ll design a shirt that
says in math I’m just decor and that
shirt you’re laughing it’s sold out it’s
sold out
it’s actually sad and if I think about
it too long I’ll start crying and we
don’t want that so I’ll move on and so
it’s not just their words it’s also her
actions I read a study again they make
me very upset these studies that in
German households and this holds true
for in turn bulbulay unfortunately girls
spend more time doing chores than boys
because boys mow the lawn with dad and
girls do the dishes in the laundry with
mom and these are the more
time-consuming tasks so there we’re
setting them up for the pattern that
we’re trying to change there’s so much
discussion on how do we get women to
stay in the workforce and we need the
men to do more but we’re passing on a
completely different message to our
girls and our sons and daughters and
then what else we’re passing along with
that is we’re giving them a wage gap to
go along with it because another study
found that eight-year-old boys get 20%
more allowance than eight-year-old girls
that is messed up that is really messed
up and so initially when I read these
studies I of course immediately did an
assessment of her own household I felt
really good because I do the shopping in
the cooking but my husband vacuums and
does the laundry thus proving you don’t
need a second X chromosome to turn on a
non washing machine and you can imagine
the look on my admittedly somewhat smug
face when I realized I have never known
alone in my life
and it really needs mowing because this
is what it looked like yesterday morning
I can’t tell you why I haven’t but if no
ambitions to do so and that is a problem
because with our actions with what we do
and what we don’t do we are
subconsciously passing on the message
that moms don’t mow the lawn and I asked
all of my mom friends you guys more the
lawn no we don’t and part of the reason
why we don’t mow the lawn is and don’t
watch on our words and don’t pay
attention to our actions because it can
be uncomfortable to do so every single
time I talk about this and now I because
I wear the blue polo I get asked about
this a lot is what can we do and I talk
about these questions and how it’s
sometimes you have these sexist remarks
going on or these little jokes or the
cute comments about how girls can’t do
math and it makes people uncomfortable
it really makes people uncomfortable
because that means that you’re sort of
pointing a finger and nobody wants to be
the annoying gender watchdog I don’t
want to be the annoying gender watch
duck I also don’t really want you like
mowing or long and because I’m already
flying into space
isn’t that enough I don’t want a mower
long to my husband can just do that but
I think it’s really important that we
all look at what we say and what we do
because with the future we’re heading to
we cannot afford to have things stay the
same as they are right now we can’t
afford to have her kids growing up in a
world where they’re slamming into gender
stereotypical books bookshelves and
elementary school wage gaps that’s not
possible
it’s not acceptable I don’t want that I
don’t think either you do neither do you
and so initially this is where I wanted
to end my talk but then I decided that
I’m being ridiculous
and so yesterday
for the first time in my life I’m proud
to say that a moment long part of it at
least because then I went inside to
practice my talk for today and I even
had a little helper who came outside
because she saw me outside so she came
outside – and helped and I’m fully aware
that this was not one of those dromeda
galaxy moments for her most likely it
was not but at least my husband since
thanks to TEDx Hamburg because now I
more the world and what I want to end
with now is I think that if all of us
here just take a little time to think on
our words and our actions we can all
contribute we can all contribute to
getting more women into space and
hopefully beyond one small step at a
time
[Applause]
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