this photo shows two Carl intercultural
schools 2017-2018 central student
council also known as the CSC does
anything in this photo sent out to you
there is only one female in this photo
mean and I am just his first CSC female
president in the past ten years when
people think of gists international and
progressive are often two adjectives
that come into mind yet gender disparity
and student leadership still persists
here today now this graph shows a number
of male to females CSC leaders elected
annually over the past ten years purple
is for females and green is for males on
average there is only one point eight
three females elected annually into the
CSC this means that there is only one
female to represent fifty percent of the
student body and the CSC can be seen as
a senior leadership position a council
that is in charge of organizing
school-wide events of improving student
life and overseeing grade-level councils
whereas grade-level councils can be seen
as junior leadership positions councils
only in charge of their grade level
now this next graph shows the number of
female to males
elected annually into the grade level
councils and clearly the numbers are
more equal so from this graph we can
know that girls are interested in
leadership positions but what is
stopping them from running for a higher
position what is stopping them from
running for presidency four years ago as
a freshman I was actually not about to
run for Student Council
I remember sitting amongst my two
hundred / classmates listening to our
principal mr. Clark explained what
student council is and a small part of
me always wanted to run but I was scared
and the weeks leading up to student
council applications I was doubting
myself
even more because every day at school
the Friends of male candidates would be
extremely loud and rowdy and everyday
they would shout across campus to vote
for this guy and every day they would
promote the parties that they held for
another however my friends were more
quiet my friends were more restrained
and my friends unintentionally didn’t
give me that same feeling of
encouragement I felt as if I didn’t have
supporters as if I wasn’t going to win
and in that moment my biggest setback
wasn’t my qualifications my biggest
setback was my mindset in fact girls
have been submerged into a culture that
conditions them to idealize perfection
it all first started with being the
perfect wife to our husbands then it
moved on to having the perfect body and
now we have this crazy idea of
effortless perfection that in addition
to being physically beautiful 24/7 we’re
also expected to be smart to be
successful but also feminine and
ladylike and somehow we’re supposed to
do all of this effortlessly and then we
begin equating perfection with the idea
of having it all but also note that this
is only one aspect of the lack of female
teenage leaders there are also other
factors like a community’s bias towards
male leaders however I found that
perception of failure was most prominent
around teenage girls because perception
of failure impacts confidence it impacts
risk-taking
it impacts innovation all of which are
important aspects of becoming a leader
and I want to remind everyone in this
room that perfection is not a human
quality and if you believe that it is
then you’re preventing yourself from
stepping out of your comfort zone and
trying something that might lead to
failure or great success because we
associate
failure with imperfection and that is
clearly not the case
take JK rowling for example who faced 12
rejections before becoming the first
billionaire author in 2014 or take Oprah
Winfrey whose failure inarguably
launched her on a career of TV success
or take me who failed to make the
cross-country traveling team and
freshman year but because I failed to
make the cross-country team it made me
train harder over the summer train
harder over the next season and become
so dedicated to the sport that I became
captain of the girls cross-country team
and senior year you see failure doesn’t
hinder you instead it shapes the type of
person that you will become and we’re so
obsessed with this idea of perfection
that we’ve created the fear of failure
and studies have actually shown that
girls and boys interpret failure
differently a study found that teachers
and parents give less and fewer cues to
girls to try harder or again when they
fail boys however are encouraged to
persevere to find new strategies and
then we begin to see how these
experiences shape a person because boys
begin to see failures as a learning
experience whereas girls see it as a
threat and a study by Stanford found out
when fifth grade students were given an
incredibly hard task to solve it was the
girls who were derailed by confusion and
unable to solve it in fact it was the
highest IQ girls who couldn’t solve it
the most and a Harvard professor also
found that it was girls who are dropping
out of Economics classes when they
failed to receive aids but what I find
even more interesting is that I don’t
have to look at all of these studies to
see this disparity in mindset because
this disparity in mindset exists edges
as well last year I was taking an AP
calculus AP class
which can be seen as an honors math
route for an 11th grade student and from
this class two of my female classmates
dropped out whereas all of my male
classmates continued and when I asked
the girls why they would always say that
math is too hard I can’t do it but when
I asked the boys why they would say mass
is always hard and it’s important to
note that these were people with same if
not similar grades that their
capabilities were the same yet girls
tended to associate their failures in
two internal factors like their lack of
ability whereas boys associated it to
external factors like the subject a
building is not the problem here
but mindset is a completely different
story and there’s so many articles books
and videos on failure and overcoming it
yet it still persists here today with
teenage girls and it’s because we apply
the same mindset we have to our school
work on failure we procrastinate if you
see an opportunity that might lead to
failure if it is something that you want
to do don’t run away don’t tell yourself
I’ll do it next time
because if not now then when tomorrow
next year when you graduate university
or maybe even when you’re on your
deathbed no the answer is now and the
truth is that nobody is ready to face
their fears to face what the future
holds but the future is inevitable
so like guru nanak once said conquer
your mind and you will conquer it the
world Circe’s that internet in that
internal battle of yours to seize the
moments and your fear of rejection and
go out find your passion and don’t look
back but we also need to widen our lens
and look at ourselves because a lack of
female teenage leaders doesn’t only lie
within the individual but also by the
communities
rounding these girls and we as a
community have failed we have tried and
tried to have more females in leadership
positions by giving them the
opportunities by giving them the
resources but clearly we aren’t
successful so what can we do girls will
not step up to leadership positions if
they don’t see themselves as worthy or
capable of these positions and how they
create these perceptions of themselves
comes from the environment and the
community around them
now let’s backtrack into my freshman
year where I lacked the confidence and
feared the failure of not making it into
the student council I remember clearly
sitting at my laptop screen looking at
the application deadlines and my sister
came up to me and said not believing in
your capabilities will be one of your
biggest regrets and in that moment of
self belief and self-confidence I
applied and four years later Here I am
the president of the high school all
because one person told me to believe in
myself and while my sister said four
years ago impacted Who I am today
and what I do today will impact my best
friends and along the way more and more
people will be impacted and their
tomorrows will be affected however these
perceptions of failures applies equally
to boys but from the studies to the
statistics to this picture we can
already see that boys are already
receiving this feeling and encouragement
and I’m not telling you to go out and
neglect the male population as a whole
I’m rather I’m telling you to balance
the Equality the encouragement between
both sexes by increasing this
encouragement towards females as well
and we can all benefit from having more
female leaders and how we move towards
that is by changing how we treat women
and we can all start from today so if
you can reach under your chairs you will
find an envelope with a pen and a slip
of paper
and I want you to think of a girl any a
girl and write her a note telling her
that you believe in her and maybe you
will make a difference in her life and
then I want you to reflect on your
failures and reflect on your successes
because failure is success a trying
success at learning how to succeed and
if you didn’t try your hardest then you
failed at failure thank you
[Music] [Applause]