My favorite quote at the moment is “Be you, bravely”. I’m obsessed with the idea of being brave and confident, but it’s something I work at and struggle with every day. I stumbled upon a TED Talk this past week titled “Teach girls bravery, not perfection”. Naturally it caught my eye and it made me realize why bravery is so hard for not only me but for many women to succeed at.
Reshma Saujani, the woman who delivered the TED talk, spoke about the first time she had ever felt truly brave. When she was 33, she ran for Congress. Everyone told her that she had no chance of winning, but she ran anyway. They were right. She only received 19 percent of the vote, but the lesson she learned was that she finally felt brave. She went on to give statistics about how boys will take risks when applying to jobs, asking a girl on a date, or asking for a raise, whereas most women will not do these things unless there is a guarantee of success. In my mind, this doesn’t show that women are less confident than men. This shows that from when we are little kids, boys are praised for doing things out of their comfort zones. Girls are praised for being shy and sweet and playing by the rulebook. A quote from Reshma that sums up these thoughts well is
“We're raising our girls to be perfect, and we're raising our boys to be brave.”
It scares me to think that I don’t know if I’ve had a moment where I’ve felt brave. I’ve told boys how I feel about them, but with a major fear of rejection. I’ve stood up for friends, but with the fear of people taking me as a mean girl. I applied for an internship only when I knew I met all of the qualifications. I have done things in my life that may be considered out of my comfort zone, but I wasn’t being brave. I always had a major fear of showing vulnerability and not being the sweet, shy, perfect girl I was told I needed to be. The fact that not only me but also a majority of the women around me, are afraid to take risks out of fear of not being perfect is messed up. This shouldn’t have to be said, but women are just as smart, strong, and talented as men. In fact, at the 5th-grade level, girls consistently out-perform the boys in their class in every subject. A disconnect begins around this time for girls. Even though they are just as smart, or smarter than the boys, they become afraid of the challenging problems and activities out of fear of failure.
So how do we fix this lack of bravery?
Reshma started her own non-profit that teaches young girls how to code. She says that she gets to see girls being brave every day. There are non-profits and organizations that are reteaching what it’s like to be brave after years of girls being told to be perfect. While these organizations are making huge strides in instilling girls' bravery, I think the main solution comes from the very beginning. We should equip our girls from birth with the knowledge that they can, and should be brave. We start by never telling young girls that they shouldn’t do something because it’s too “risky”. We tell them that it’s ok to not be perfect and it’s ok to fail multiple times before they succeed.
