Teach girls bravery, not perfection
女孩要勇敢,而不是完美
演说者:Reshma Saujani
So a few years ago, I did something really brave, or some would say really stupid. I ran for Congress.For years, I had existed safely behind the scenes in politics as a fundraiser, as an organizer, but in my heart, I always wanted to run. The sitting congresswoman had been in my district since 1992.
几年前,我做了一些非常勇敢的事,或许有些人会说很愚蠢的事。我参选国会议员。很多年来,我安全地存在于 政治活动背后作为资金筹集人,作为组织者,但我的内心,我一直希望参选。我所在选区的国会议员女士从1992年起担任这个职务。
She had never lost a race, and no one had really even run against her in a Democratic primary. But in my mind, this was my way to make a difference, to disrupt the status quo. The polls, however, told a very different story. My pollsters told me that I was crazy to run, that there was no way that I could win.
她从未输过一场选战,没有人真正认真地在民主选举中与她竞争。但在我心中,这就是我 创造不同的方式,改变现状。民意调查,然而,显示出完全不同的故事。我的民调专家告诉我我要参选简直疯了,我不可能会赢。
But I ran anyway, and in 2012, I became an upstart in a New York City congressional race. I swore I was going to win. I had the endorsement from the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal snapped pictures of me on election day, and CNBC called it one of the hottest races in the country.
但我还是参选了,在2012年,我成了崛起的新秀参选纽约市国会竞选。我发誓我会赢。我得到了《纽约每日新闻》的认可,《华尔街日报》刊登了我在选举日的照片,美国全国广播公司财经频道称之为全国范围内最热的选战。
I raised money from everyone I knew, including Indian aunties that were just so happy an Indian girl was running. But on election day, the polls were right, and I only got 19 percent of the vote, and the same papers that said I was a rising political star now said I wasted 1.3 million dollars on 6,321 votes. Don't do the math. It was humiliating.
我从我认识的每个人那里筹钱,包括印度阿姨们。她们很高兴一个印度女生参选。但选举日,民调是对的,我只拿到了19%的选票,那张曾称我为新兴政治明星的报纸现在却说我浪费了130万美金在6321张选票上。不要算数字。太丢脸了。
Now, before you get the wrong idea, this is not a talk about the importance of failure. Nor is it about leaning in. I tell you the story of how I ran for Congress because I was 33 years old and it was the first time in my entire life that I had done something that was truly brave, where I didn't worry about being perfect.
现在,在你们得到错误观点前,这不是一个讲述失败有多重要的演说。也不是说女孩要向前一步。我讲述的故事是我如何参选国会议员的,因为我只有33岁,这是我人生中第一次 做出真正勇敢的事,没有担心完美。
And I'm not alone: so many women I talk to tell me that they gravitate towards careers and professions that they know they're going to be great in, that they know they're going to be perfect in, and it's no wonder why. Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We're taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A's. Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey bars and then just jump off headfirst.
我不是一个人: 太多女士曾告诉我,她们多么被职业和专业吸引,她们知道她们会做得很好,她们知道她们会非常完美,不足为奇。绝大多数的女孩被教育来规避风险和失败。我们被教育要有漂亮的微笑,不要冒险,课程拿全A。男孩们,另一方面来说,被教育成要更加勇猛,冲击更高的目标,爬上单杠最高的那层然后往下跳。
And by the time they're adults, whether they're negotiating a raise or even asking someone out on a date, they're habituated to take risk after risk. They're rewarded for it. It's often said in Silicon Valley, no one even takes you seriously unless you've had two failed start-ups. In other words, we're raising our girls to be perfect, and we're raising our boys to be brave.
当他们成长为大人,无论他们是在谈判加薪或是约某人出去玩,他们习惯于接受一个一个挑战。他们也为此得到回报奖赏。在矽谷有这样的说法,没人把你当回事除非你创业失败两次以上。另一句话说,我们教育培养女孩子们追求完美,我们教育培养男孩子们要勇敢。
Some people worry about our federal deficit, but I, I worry about our bravery deficit. Our economy, our society, we're just losing out because we're not raising our girls to be brave. The bravery deficit is why women are underrepresented in STEM, in C-suites, in boardrooms, in Congress, and pretty much everywhere you look.
有些人担心我们的联邦赤字,但是,我担心我们的勇气赤字。我们的经济,我们的社会, 我们在遭受损失,因为我们没有教育女孩子们要勇敢。勇气赤字就是为什么女性在科学技术工程数学(STEM)领域,在企业高管层,在董事会,在国会,在你所看到的任何地方 都未被充分代表。
In the 1980s, psychologist Carol Dweck looked at how bright fifth graders handled an assignment that was too difficult for them. She found that bright girls were quick to give up. The higher the IQ, the more likely they were to give up. Bright boys, on the other hand, found the difficult material to be a challenge. They found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts.
在1980年代,心理学家Carol Dweck 观察研究了五年级学生如何处理一项对他们来说太困难的作业。她发现,聪明的女孩们很快就放弃了。智商越高的女孩,放弃的可能性越大。 男孩们,将困难的材料视为一个挑战。他们为此精力充沛。他们更倾向于双倍努力。
What's going on? Well, at the fifth grade level, girls routinely outperform boys in every subject, including math and science, so it's not a question of ability. The difference is in how boys and girls approach a challenge. And it doesn't just end in fifth grade.
发生了什么? 嗯,在五年级, 女孩总的来说比男孩 在各个科目的表现都要好, 包括数学和科学, 所以这不是能力的问题。 不同点在于男孩和女孩 如何看待挑战。 这不止于五年级。
An HP report found that men will apply for a job if they meet only 60 percent of the qualifications, but women, women will apply only if they meet 100 percent of the qualifications. 100 percent. This study is usually invoked as evidence that, well, women need a little more confidence. But I think it's evidence that women have been socialized to aspire to perfection, and they're overly cautious.
一份惠普报告指出男性会递出工作申请。如果他们只达到60%的招聘要求,而女性,女性只有在100%达到招聘要求的时候才会递出申请。百分之百。这份研究通常会被作为证据来说,嗯,女性需要更多的自信。但我认为这是证据,说明女性长期被赋予追逐完美,她们太过谨慎了。
And even when we're ambitious, even when we're leaning in, that socialization of perfection has caused us to take less risks in our careers. And so those 600,000 jobs that are open right now in computing and tech, women are being left behind, and it means our economy is being left behind on all the innovation and problems women would solve if they were socialized to be brave instead of socialized to be perfect.
即使是当我们雄心勃勃,即使我们向前一步,社会对完美的要求让我们在职业发展中选择冒更小的风险。现在,在计算机和科技领域,有六十万个开放申请的工作职位,女性被抛在了后面,这也意味着我们的经济被远远抛在了后面。女性可以解决的创新和难题,如果女性被教育要勇敢,而不是完美。
So in 2012, I started a company to teach girls to code, and what I found is that by teaching them to code I had socialized them to be brave. Coding, it's an endless process of trial and error, of trying to get the right command in the right place, with sometimes just a semicolon making the difference between success and failure. Code breaks and then it falls apart, and it often takes many, many tries until that magical moment when what you're trying to build comes to life. It requires perseverance. It requires imperfection.
在2012年,我创办了一家公司 教女孩如何编程,我发现,通过教她们如何编程,我令她们更加勇敢。编程,是一个无止尽的过程实验和错误,试着将对的指令放在合适的地方,有时只是一个分号,就能决定成功还是失败。编码出错了随后七零八落,时常需要很多很多次试验,直到那个神奇的时刻,你想要搭建的程序完成了。它需要持之以恒的努力。需要接受不完美。
We immediately see in our program our girls' fear of not getting it right, of not being perfect. Every Girls Who Code teacher tells me the same story. During the first week, when the girls are learning how to code, a student will call her over and she'll say, "I don't know what code to write." The teacher will look at her screen, and she'll see a blank text editor. If she didn't know any better, she'd think that her student spent the past 20 minutes just staring at the screen.
我们立即发现在项目里女孩们害怕出错,害怕不完美。每个女孩的指导老师都和我说一样的故事。在第一周,当女孩们试着学习如何编程,一个学生叫她过去她说到,“我不知道要写那个编码。”当老师看她的屏幕,会看到一个完全空白的界面。如果她不知道原因的话,她也许会想她的学生在过去的20分钟里,只是盯着屏幕发呆。
But if she presses undo a few times, she'll see that her student wrote code and then deleted it. She tried, she came close, but she didn't get it exactly right. Instead of showing the progress that she made, she'd rather show nothing at all. Perfection or bust.It turns out that our girls are really good at coding, but it's not enough just to teach them to code.
但如果她点击几下撤销键,他就会看到她的学生,写了代码随后又删掉了它们。她尝试了,她接近目标了,但是她没有完全答对。比起展现她经历的过程,她宁可什么都不展现。要么完美要么什么也没有。结果显示女孩们非常善于编程,但教给她们如何写代码是完全不够的。
My friend Lev Brie, who is a professor at the University of Columbia and teaches intro to Java tells me about his office hours with computer science students. When the guys are struggling with an assignment, they'll come in and they'll say, "Professor, there's something wrong with my code." The girls will come in and say, "Professor, there's something wrong with me."
我的朋友Lev Brie,是哥伦比亚大学的教授,他教授Java编程,他告诉我他对电脑科学学生开放的,咨询时间里发生的故事。当男生们艰难应对一个作业的时候,他们会过来然后说,“教授,我编的程序出了点问题。” 女生们会过来然后说,“教授,我出了点问题。”
We have to begin to undo the socialization of perfection, but we've got to combine it with building a sisterhood that lets girls know that they are not alone. Because trying harder is not going to fix a broken system.
我们必须要撤销对女性社会化的完美主义,我们必须要将这和 建立女性支持系统一起让女孩们知道她们并不孤单。因为再努力地尝试也无法修补一个破裂的系统。
I can't tell you how many women tell me,“"I'm afraid to raise my hand, I'm afraid to ask a question, because I don't want to be the only one who doesn't understand, the only one who is struggling. When we teach girls to be brave and we have a supportive network cheering them on, they will build incredible things, and I see this every day.
太多的女性朋友告诉我,"我害怕举手发言,我害怕问问题,因为我不想做那个 那个唯一不懂的人,那个唯一挣扎的人。当我们教女孩们要勇敢,我们要有支持她们的系统来鼓励她们,她们会有伟大的成就,我每天都看到这些事。
Take, for instance, two of our high school students who built a game called Tampon Run -- yes, Tampon Run -- to fight against the menstruation taboo and sexism in gaming. Or the Syrian refugee who dared show her love for her new country by building an app to help Americans get to the polls. Or a 16-year-old girl who built an algorithm to help detect whether a cancer is benign or malignant in the off chance that she can save her daddy's life because he has cancer.
举个例子,两个高中学生,制作了一个游戏叫做 卫生棉逃亡-- (译者注:和游戏”神庙逃亡“谐音) 对,卫生棉逃亡-- 来反对游戏中的月经标记和对女性的歧视。或是叙利亚难民 她展示了对新国家的爱,制作了一款应用程序,让美国人轻松了解民调。或是一个16岁的女孩,她建立了一套运算系统来帮助测算癌症是良性的还是恶性的,抱着一丝希望能救她患癌症的父亲。
These are just three examples of thousands, thousands of girls who have been socialized to be imperfect, who have learned to keep trying, who have learned perseverance. And whether they become coders or the next Hillary Clinton or Beyoncé, they will not defer their dreams.
这只是成千上万个例子中的三个,成千上万个女孩被社会化为不完美的,她们学习如何不断尝试,学着如何持之以恒。无论她们未来会成为程序员或是下一个希拉里•克林顿 或是碧昂斯,她们不会推迟自己的梦想。
And those dreams have never been more important for our country. For the American economy, for any economy to grow, to truly innovate, we cannot leave behind half our population. We have to socialize our girls to be comfortable with imperfection, and we've got to do it now. We cannot wait for them to learn how to be brave like I did when I was 33 years old.
这些梦想对我们国家来说是多么重要。对美国的经济,对任何成长中的经济,对真正的创新开发,我们不能丢下半数的人口。我们需要社会化地教女孩们 适应习惯不完美,我们现在开始就要这样做。我们不能等到她们自己去学习如何勇敢,就像我33岁时那样。
We have to teach them to be brave in schools and early in their careers, when it has the most potential to impact their lives and the lives of others, and we have to show them that they will be loved and accepted not for being perfect but for being courageous.
我们要教她们勇敢在学校在职业起步的时期, 在能够影响她们的人生 以及其他人的人生,重要的时期, 要让她们知道她们会被爱被接受,不是因为完美,而是因为充满勇气。
And so I need each of you to tell every young woman you know -- your sister, your niece, your employee, your colleague -- to be comfortable with imperfection, because when we teach girls to be imperfect, and we 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 for each and every one of us.
我需要你们每个人 告诉你认识的每个年轻女士 -- 你的姐妹,你的侄女, 你的雇员,你的同事 -- 习惯接受不完美,因为当我们告诉女孩不必完美的时候,我们帮助她们平衡这样的关系,我们会有更多勇敢的年轻女士,这些女士为她们自己和我们每个人建立更好的世界。
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