Biology or Culture | Claudia Moragado |TEDxPortoWomen

Men and women are different, but can we dissociate biology and culture? What is the importance of education in our society? Who should be responsible for it? Claudia Morgado got her academic and professional experience in the health sector as a pharmacist, but life led her to the tech sector and now she is the COO of Redlight Software, a company specializing in health-care software.
Responsible for Human Resources among other things, she sees diversity as a crucial part of a company culture that influences the identity of the business, from the teams and the products and services they provide. Among the causes that move her and the interests to which she devotes her free time, she emphasizes her passion for socially sustainable entrepreneurship and the application of AI to health care.

This talk was given at a TEDx event that uses TED conference format but is independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

We are all becoming more and more exposed.

Everything we say, everything we do,

everything we even think,

has a much longer reach today than ever.

Now imagine this.

Imagine that any of your posts
on a social network

is opening news
on every news station one day.

This happened to me.

I have two kids,

a boy and a girl,

seven and six years old.

It was August, and we were all on holiday.

While they played,

a display of activity books caught my eye.

But specifically a set in pink and blue.

Maybe you all know what I am about to say.

I flipped through around 20 pages in them,

and what I saw was too obvious to ignore.

I didn't see authors or editors,
illustrators, nothing,

I only saw with a mother's eyes,

the mother of Pedro and Carolina.

A mother who tried and tried
to teach them equality.

The photos I took, rushed

and still with my other
purchases in my hand,

only to spark a discussion

my husband and I, who was a bit
further ahead, were trying to have.

A few days before, we were
about to discuss if it was to be us,

parents and society, that shaped
to a certain extent

the likes and preferences of children.

Those preferences that later
in the job market

would become inequalities.

I am a pharmacist

(Laughter)

working in a software company.

I left the health industry
for the tech industry.

In pharmaceutics, 80% of jobs
were held by women.

In tech, it is exactly the opposite.

Men hold most of the jobs.

But is this really due

to the gender difference?

Men and women are different, yes.

We are physically different,

due completely to biology.

But can we say the same
about behavior and preferences?

This conversation with my husband
was triggered by a BBC video.

In a filmed experiment, they dressed
a baby boy in a dress

and a baby girl in pants and a shirt.

In a controlled environment
with toys of all kinds everywhere,

they asked adult volunteers
to entertain the kids

for a while.

The majority tried to play
with the "girl" with baby dolls,

with dolls, with stuffed animals,

teaching "her" to cradle,
to dress and undress.

And the "boy" - the girl dressed as one -

they gave Legos, cars, robots.

They taught "him" to drive and build.

But clearly it is in our nature
as women to know how to hold a child

and change a diaper, right?

Maybe not.

A relatively recent controversy

at Google also came to social networks.

A male employee who was fired

challenged an internal policy
of diversity and inclusion

saying, quote and unquote:

that the difference in number
between men and women

in the tech sector was probably due
to the natural differences

between men and women.

Women are more
people-oriented, he claimed.

It is natural that they found jobs
in more social sectors,

like health care.

And men were object-oriented,

and this is why they are the majority
in the technology sector

and in the engineering sciences.

According to him, women are cooperative.

And this is why it is men

who hold most leadership positions,

because, according to him,
they are naturally competitive

and more likely to take risks.

But can we be creating this difference?

It was exactly these two traits --

how we react to competition and risk --

that investigators tried
to reveal in 2009.

To do this, they found two tribes.

One in Tanzania, one in India.

One was patriarchial,
the other was matriarchial.

In the patriarchial society,

men displayed a much higher
tendency to be competitive

and a greater stomach for risk

in numbers close to
current Western society.

However, in the matriarchial tribes,
it turned out to be the women

that were much more competitive

and had higher risk tolerance.

This study leads us to conclude

that at least in these traits,
they are not natural gender differences.

They are societally created.

However, we, the society, continue
to give, completly and exclusively,

to parents all of the responsibilty
for educational decisions.

As they are the ones
stuck living with the kids

for at least 30 years, right?

In January of this year, a Science study
emerged that should worry all of us.

Researchers from three universities
tried to find the effects

of gender stereotypes on school-aged kids.

Five to seven years old.

Kids as young as my Carolina, aged six,

were found to be under the influence
of gender stereotypes.

For example, they identified
as mostly masculine traits

intelligence and genius.

And if this were not worrying enough,

the same study showed

that this already affected behavior.

Girls of this age proved less motivated

to even start activities
that they percieved

as being for "very intelligent" students.

In the same study,
it was found that the girls,

despite having better grades,
despite having good results in school,

attributed this to work and study.

The boys assumed it was
a natural result of their competence.

When we speak of equality,

it is easy to confuse it with
defense of women's rights.

But the reality is
that it also impacts men.

For example, in a divorce,

a man, a father, knows at the start

that in spite of all he could say, allege,

or prove in court,

the grand majority of the decisions
will be the choice of the mother.

Just because of his gender.

But then, what can we do?

The reality is that in this country
of all talk and no action,

it is hard sometimes to see
what is within reach.

And when some study
tries to bring it to light,

it comes under fire.

Recently, a controversy ignited
over affirmative action measures

when legislation was approved

that would impose quotas
on the executive boards

of publicly listed companies.

Affirmative action measures
always seemed dubious.

Wouldn't it be discriminatory for men
to be passed by in favor of women

solely on basis of sex?

Truthfully, beyond having an opinion,

we must try to see if there are data,

if there is information to at least

base our opinion on.

Way back in 1993, in Sweden,
legislation was approved

that required gender parity
in political parties.

Fifty-fifty.

This year four economists looked at
the effects of the law on the country.

The main conclusion that they drew

was that the overall competence
of politicians in the nation grew.

The doubts that also existed there

that women would replace competent men

did not come true.

What ended up happening

was competent women
replaced mediocre men.

And, guys, these are not my words.

That was exactly what the authors
of the study decided to call it:

"The Crisis of the Mediocre Man".

But now to a study

a bit closer to the law
that Portugal passed.

In Norway, a similar study
was conducted over businesses

and the main conclusion they drew

was that there was
no difficulty for businesses

to hire competent women.

They were already there,
ready to be promoted.

They just weren't.

Now, back to the activity books

and "Silly Season",
as it was so often called.

In the words of Luís Aguiar Correria,

father, economist,
and defender of equality:

What is the problem with books
for girls and for boys?

It is very easy to argue
that a girl reading a book for girls

does not impede her, for example,
from going into astronomy.

Impeded? No. But conditioned.

Boys and girls are conditioned to this,

and to deny the conditioning
is to deny science.

When we teach a kid,

our goal should be to expand its horizons,

to boost schooling.

Not to condition them.

In this country,
where so many fail to teach,

where we think that that job
is exclusively for parents,

we often use the free market as a shield

to simply avoid the responsibility

that should be everyone's responsibility,

which is what we give to children.

The education of future generations

should be a concern of all society.

If we want a more equal society,

if we want a better tomorrow,

then we have to raise the stakes today

on the quality of education
of our children.

Because if we know that gender roles

are not only already present in our kids

but influence them negatively,
condition them,

if we know that certain behaviors
are not natural gender differences,

but are social constructs,
then let's stop making excuses

because education is a responsibility
of all of society.

(Applause)