Brave, Not Perfect. Reshma Saujani

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СКАЧАТЬ love. It’s not a coincidence that male economics majors outnumber women three to one; research done by Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin revealed that women who earn B’s in introductory economics are far more likely to switch majors than those who earn A’s (while their male counterparts stick with it, B’s be damned).

      Appearing stupid is a huge concern. In perfect-girl world, being judged harshly by one’s peers is the ultimate mortification; and it’s been shown to be one of the main barriers girls face when they think about doing anything brave. For Destiny, math had always been a challenge. But the boys in her middle school made her feel far worse about it. “I’d be up at the board for a long time trying to work out a problem, and they’d say something like, ‘You’re so dumb,’ or they’d laugh, and I’d get all flustered. It made me not even want to try to do math anymore. Why put all this effort in, just to get it wrong, and get yelled at by the boys?”

      I know how she feels. When I was in law school at Yale, I remember sitting in my constitutional law class wanting desperately to contribute but feeling too intimidated. I mean, I was a girl from Schaumburg, Illinois, who was one of the first in my community to go on to an Ivy League grad school. All my classmates seemed so smart and impeccably articulate, and I didn’t want to seem stupid in comparison. So I’d write out in my notebook exactly what I wanted to say, then I’d rewrite it three, four, a dozen times. By the time I worked up the courage to raise my hand, class was usually over.

      Of course, the fears of not measuring up extend beyond the classroom. Amanda wanted to try lacrosse in high school but didn’t because she’s “not athletic.” She summed up in two sentences a familiar sentiment I heard expressed in so many different varieties: “I just felt like if I couldn’t do it well, I didn’t want to do it at all.”

      It’s important to understand that for girls, failure is defined as anything that is less than the proverbial A+. It’s black and white: you either totally rock or totally suck. To them, failure isn’t just painful—it’s colossal, devastating, and to be avoided at all costs. So if they can’t rock it, they skip it.

       The Fixed Mindset

      When Amanda declared that she didn’t dare try lacrosse, she fell victim to a type of thinking that Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck famously outlined in her brilliant book Mindset. In a nutshell, Dweck identified two different belief systems about ability and intelligence.

      The first is a fixed mindset. A person with a fixed mind-set believes that their abilities are innate and unchangeable. You’re either smart or you aren’t, talented or untalented, athletic or not at all, and there’s not much you can do about it. The other is a growth mindset, which is based on the belief that abilities can be developed and cultivated through effort. Regardless of whatever natural level of ability or talent you are born with, you can learn skills and improve.

      These are the hallmarks of a fixed mindset:

       • An urgency to prove oneself again and again.

       • Deep concern about making mistakes and failing.

       • A reluctance to expose deficiencies.

       • Seeing imperfections as shameful.

       • The expectation that one will do well on something right away and if one doesn’t, the loss of interest or self-admonishment for having put in the effort.

       • The tendency to see failures as a measure of one’s worth and allowing those failures to define the person.

       • Being solely focused on the outcomes. It doesn’t matter what one achieved or learned along the way. Not hitting the final mark means failure. And failure means that one isn’t smart, talented, or good enough.

      Sound familiar?

      When you tell someone with a fixed mindset that they are smart or talented, they etch these messages into the “this is how I am” truth in their minds. That sounds like good, positive self-esteem building, but the problem is that after being showered with such praise of their perceived innate abilities, they fall to pieces when they encounter setbacks. Why? Because they take any failure, however insignificant, as a sign that maybe they aren’t as innately smart or talented as they thought.

      A fixed mindset also holds us back from trying anything outside our comfort zone. How many times have you begged off doing something spontaneous and potentially fun with, “I’m just not adventurous,” or turned down an invitation or opportunity because “that’s just not who I am”? That’s the fixed mindset at work.

      Not surprisingly, girls are more prone to a fixed mindset than boys. This is partially because, as Dr. Dweck’s research showed, parents and teachers tend to give boys more “process praise,” meaning they reward them for putting in effort, trying different strategies, sticking with it, and improving, rather than for the outcome. In the absence of this kind of process praise, girls come to believe that if they can’t get something right away, they’re dumb. You can see how this impacts us later in life, as we take even the smallest daily mistakes as indicators of fundamental limitations. We forget to pick up the school supplies our kid asked for = we’re bad moms. We get a ticket for a broken taillight that we’d been meaning to take care of = we’re idiots. We see a failure as a definitive condemnation of our worth, rather than seeing ourselves and our abilities as works in progress.

      The single best example I can point to of girls being trapped in a fixed mindset is in relation to STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math). As you might imagine, being the founder of an organization that teaches coding to girls, I hear the refrain “I’m just not good at math” a lot. Like Destiny, who cringed when the boys made fun of her for taking so long up at the board to solve a math problem, or like the girls who delete their work in coding classes, it isn’t a lack of interest or capacity in these subjects that scares them off, but a perception that they’re fundamentally bad at it. After being told outright—or subtly, through the micromessages we’ll talk about in the next chapter—that boys are naturally better at math and computing (they aren’t) and that girls are innately more suited for humanities (again, not true), they believe to their core that their abilities in these subjects—or lack thereof—are carved in stone.

      Of course, they aren’t. Carol Dweck points out that no one is born with a fixed mindset; in fact, we all come prewired with a desire to learn and grow. It’s only once children begin to evaluate themselves (I’m smart/not smart) that they become afraid of challenges. Thankfully, as adults, we can undo that long-ago wiring by taking on the practice of bravery in the here and now.

       Silenced Voices

      On a gray afternoon in late January, I sat around a conference table talking with a group of high school girls from Harlem. Kim, the most opinionated of the group, sat up straight with unusual presence for a girl her age. All outward signs pointed to a confident, secure young woman so I was surprised when she shared her inner reality with us.

      “I feel like whenever girls speak up for themselves, we get slapped down for it because it seems like we’re being bossy,” she said. “Especially if I stand up for myself as a black woman specifically, boys really don’t get it. If a boy does it, it’s like he’s a boss man . . . but if it’s me, I’m just an angry black woman. Boys will say dumb stuff like they only like light-skinned girls . . . if I speak up to them, they tell me I just like to complain and dismiss me.”

      “But you’re pretty outspoken,” I said. “Does their reaction СКАЧАТЬ