Shattering the glass ceiling: women in STEM | Allison Brown | TEDxCentennialHigh

Allison Brown is dedicated to getting young girls involved in STEM careers at a young age. She wants to be an engineer, but she had never considered it until high school. She wants girls to know that STEM is always an option and parents to encourage their daughters to explore any career path.

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

Growing up, I changed
career paths many times.

First,

I wanted to be a teacher like my mom.

And then, I wanted to be a singer,
the next Taylor Swift.

Finally, I wanted to be an actress

because what 10-year-old
doesn't want to be on Disney Channel.

Whatever I thought my future
occupation would be,

an engineer was not it.

Engineering wasn't even on my radar.

In my opinion,

math and science weren't for girls.

They were for nerdy boys.

It sounds silly, but it's true.

When I was a kid, I imagined engineers
and scientists and mathematicians

as really smart men in lab coats

discussing complex theorems,
years beyond my understanding.

I thought women in STEM were anomalies.

And for a woman to be an engineer,
she had to be some kind of prodigy.

And then one day,

my older stepsister told me
that she wanted to be an engineer.

And I realized then
that women in STEM weren't prodigies.

They could be anyone.

A female engineer doesn't
have to be a prodigy,

just like a male engineer
doesn't have to be a prodigy.

And I decided then
that I wanted to be an engineer too.

After making the choice
to follow this new career path,

I started to realize
it's a whole lot easier for guys.

In most cases,
from the time they develop,

boys are taught how to use tools
and put things together.

They're the ones
who are pushed towards cars,

and we're the ones
that are pushed towards Barbies.

Toys that inspire passion
to go to engineering,

like robots and Legos,
are typically marketed towards boys.

And the ones marketed towards girls
aren't trucks or spaceships -

they're princess castles and pet shops.

I think it's the little things
that cause the gender gap

in science and math careers.

The rare little comment
that girls aren't as smart as boys -

a son being taught how to fix a car
while a daughter is taught how to cook.

It's nobody's fault.

We unconsciously do these things

because gender differences
and inequalities are things

that have been around for a long time.

And now, they're drilled into our heads.

We solved a lot of this
back in the early days

with women's suffrage
and equal education.

And now it's time for us
to fix the little things,

so that we can grow even closer
to achieving equality.

The lack of women in STEM
isn't all across the board, however.

In fact, in areas such
as medical science and social science,

the ratio is actually very balanced.

But in areas that are often
considered more "taxing,"

such as computer science and mathematics,

women make up about a quarter
of the workforce.

I want that number to even out.

There's a constant fallacy
that's spoken from the beginning:

teasing, stereotyping, marginalization.

Countless articles discuss

how women feel out of place
in classes relating to STEM,

due to reasons such as other
classmates mocking them

or a professor not paying
as much attention to them

or a lack of other female
classmates in the class.

And if gender inequality
isn't a reason enough

for wanting more women involved in STEM,

take into account
the scientific discoveries

that have been made by women.

Cardiovascular disease symptoms
were always being based off male symptoms.

Despite the fact that it manifests
very differently in men and women,

the average male is the model

for investigating diseases
and designing treatment

because men were the ones
doing the research.

For years, women died
from incorrect diagnoses

because no one took into account

that a person's sex
could have such an effect

on how a disease appeared.

Now that more women are getting
more involved in medical research,

however, they themselves are taking
into account these differences

and are consequently saving lives.

Women have been advancing their fields
farther ahead for centuries.

Ada Lovelace created a plan for a machine

that could perform complex
mathematical calculations.

She did this in the early 1800s.

It was never built during her lifetime,

but her plans were used a century later
to build the world's first computers.

One of the world's first
electronic computers, called the "ENIAC,"

was programmed
by six female mathematicians.

Now, Amy Sheng, an engineer,
is developing a smartphone attachment

called CellScope,

which allows mothers to detect
ear infections in their children.

Hadiyah-Nicole Green,
a medical physicist,

is designing a cancer treatment

that uses lasers to destroy
cancer cells exclusively.

Despite these achievements,
women are still isolated in STEM fields.

I can also get into other problems
such as the gender pay gap.

But the fact is that we have
made so much progress,

and yet we are still miles away
from the finish line.

It's because of the internalized
beliefs we don't get it,

plus it's the type
for both men and for women.

Project Implicit conducted
an investigation on half a million people,

and found that 70% of them

automatically associate men with science
and women with the arts.

My goal is to get the word out there

that any little girl or boy
can be anything they want to be,

including an engineer.

They don't have to be a prodigy
to be a scientist or mathematician.

As long as they work hard,

they can be anything
they would like to be.

Parents, teachers, and friends
shouldn't hold them back.

They should encourage them.

I want that internalized bias to be gone

because that's what stopped me
from wanting to be an engineer

when I was little.

And I don't want to stop anyone else
from wanting to be an engineer ever again.

Thank you.

(Applause) (Cheers)