When I was 33 years old, I decided to run for Congress. In my mind, this is my way to make difference and to disrupt the status quo. The reality, however, told a different story. This is not a talk about the importance of failure nor is it about leaning in.
Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. On the other hand, boys are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top. By the time they are adults, whether they are negotiating a raise or even asking someone out on a date, they are habituated to take risk after risk. They’re rewarded for it. It’s often said in Silicon Valley that no one even takes you seriously unless you’ve had two failed start-ups. In other words, people are raising our girls to be perfect and boys to be brave.
Our economy, our society, we are just losing out because we are not raising our girl to be brave. The bravery deficit is why women are underrepresented in STEM, in boardrooms, in Congress and pretty much everywhere we look. In the 1980s, psychologist found that bright girls were quick to give up when faced an assignment that was too difficult for them. The higher IQ, the more likely they were to give up. On the contrary, bright boys found the difficult material to be a challenge. They were more likely to redouble their efforts for this work. The difference is in how boys and girls approach a challenge. And it doesn’t happen in grade five. Women will apply for a job only if they meet 100 percent of qualifications. It’s the evidence that women have been socialized to aspire to perfection, and they’re over cautious.
Even when women are ambitious, even when women are leaning in, that socialization of perfection has caused them to take less risks in their careers. So all the innovations and problems women would solve if they were socialized to be brave instead of socialized to be perfect. Coding, it’s an endless process of trial and error, of trying to get the right command in the right place, with sometime just a little semicolon making the difference between success and failure. It’s requires perseverance and imperfection. Instead of showing the progress that she made, she’d rather show nothing at all. Perfection or bust. It turns out girls are really good at coding, but it’s not enough just to teach them to code. We have to begin to undo the socialization of perfection because trying harder is not going to fix a broken system.
When we teach our girls to be brave and have a supportive network cheering them on, they will build incredible things. Thousands of girls who have been socialized to be imperfect, who have learned to keep trying, who have learned perseverance, they will never defer their dreams whether they become coders or celebrities.
All in all, We have to socialize our girls to be comfortable with imperfections, and we have to show them that they will be loved and accepted not for being perfect but for being courageous. When we teach girls to be imperfect and help them leverage it, we will build a movement of young women who are brave and who will build a better world for themselves and everyone of us.
[演讲链接](http://www.bilibili.com/video/av4313892)
