Reverse Engineering Stereotypes
[Music]
take a look at me
is it obvious that i’m a qualified
mechanical engineer
don’t worry it’s not obvious and i’m
used to it
i’ve never fit any of the stereotypes
i’m not wearing greasy overalls a hard
hat
or a fluorescent jacket and i’m
certainly not a man
so how could i be an engineer the thing
is i was always
expected to study engineering as the
eldest of three daughters with a sri
lankan dad who’s also
an engineer i was always going to end up
following in his footsteps
it was either that or a career in
medicine
education is considered to be a passport
to freedom
especially for immigrants it earns us
respect it gives us choices and social
status
and when you come from humble beginnings
but say you’re a phd from a great
university
people are impressed my parents and
ancestors came from developing countries
so
and western education was a sure way to
build a decent life for themselves
but regardless of where any of us come
from and what any of us have
we all want the same basic things in
life we all want
safety stability and security
an education in stem was a sure way for
me to get those basic things
stem stands for science technology
engineering and maths
you know those subjects that girls can’t
do or
is it won’t do girls don’t fit the stem
stereotypes we’re supposed to be
nurturing carers and meant to always
look pretty and get along with everybody
boys on the other hand are expected to
be competitive
assertive and dominant what must these
stereotypes do for people long term
for those boys who aren’t confident and
outspoken
they’re told that they’re weak weak
that’s a label that’s bound to shatter
anybody’s confidence
and similarly if girls are said to be
outspoken and confident
well they’re labeled as intimidating or
even arrogant
and those labels can certainly crush any
person’s strength
1.6 million elementary high school and
university students were surveyed in
australia
and ironically girls actually do better
than boys across
all subjects at school it’s
self-confidence that lets
students down eleven and a half thousand
females between the ages of 11 and 30 in
europe
were surveyed by microsoft and the
results revealed that they enjoy stem
between the ages of 11 and 15
and 60 percent of them would pursue stem
careers
if there were equal opportunities for
them
a recent study by the education policy
institute and the prince’s trust
conducted over two years and based on
data from the millennium cohort study
found the proportion of girls that felt
unhappy about their appearance
rose sharply between the ages of 11 and
now if you combine all of this data it
seems that
around early teens girls experience an
inner conflict between how they look and
what they study at school
and that is influencing their career
choices
and it all originates from stereotypes
to me these statistics also suggest that
girls
who are more than capable in stem don’t
want to spend their careers in
discouraging
unsupportive environments and it makes
sense right
i mean life is already tough enough
stereotypes just invite judgment and
criticism and ultimately
disconnection we need to embrace those
that want to be pioneers and
trailblazers
people who want to use their talents and
skills to really make a difference
i didn’t fit into any of those
stereotypes
up until the age of 15 i was really
terrible at maths and
i certainly wasn’t pretty i kept getting
50
in all my maths exams i had no
confidence no self-esteem but like i
said i had a whole load of pressure
and expectation to become an engineer
i had to make my parents proud and i had
to make their struggle to get to london
to give their kids a british education
worthwhile
so i put my mind to it i work really
really hard
literally sleeping three hours a night
sometimes solving one
maths problem after the next and my
grades
went from 50 to over 90
all that hard work paid off because in
2004
i got my doctorate in engineering it
took me almost
eight years to get those qualifications
but the hope of providing myself with my
own safety
stability and security through a job of
my own
was now closer than ever before
i love that quote by nelson mandela
education
is the most powerful weapon you can use
to change the world
using my school education i could help
change the statistics
of the number of female engineers of
color in the uk
in 2017 11 of all engineers were female
that’s an improvement to the statistics
that were around when i
graduated back in the early 2000s
the number of people of color in
engineering was so
insignificant back then but that no data
even existed for us
today in the uk nine percent of all
engineers are from ethnic minorities
according to a report by engineering uk
in 2018
on a positive note studying made me
realize that i could do
anything i put my heart and mind to we
all can
my school education really developed my
brain it taught me to think
logically approach things methodically
and see the world
rationally but i must say i also picked
up some really bad habits which have
taken some time to shake off because at
school
i also became competitive
egotistical and absolutely terrified of
failure
i was constantly comparing myself to
others never truly believing that i was
smart enough or
good enough or talented enough i was at
school to build my personal statement
and cv so i could get into the best
schools
and get the best jobs and live the best
life
in the best neighborhoods and i kept
falling short of
every one of those ambitions which is
fine you know you aim for the stars and
you end up reaching the moon
but while i was on my moon i gazed out
at those stars
feeling like a real failure i wasn’t
building confidence with every
accomplishment
i was destroying all sense of who i
truly was
at my core i’d become a human
doing rather than a human being
obsessed with driving my life forward at
breakneck speed
and it was everybody else’s opinion of
me at the steering wheel
i was so focused on pushing this my iq
to its limits and i was pushing this my
heart
and emotional intelligence to one side
just so that my feelings wouldn’t
interfere
with my well-thought-out plans emotional
intelligence or eq was first
brought to a mainstream audience through
a book written by psychologist daniel
goldman in 1995.
he talked about eq as having the ability
to recognize
and manage emotions goldman told harvard
business review that emotional
intelligence was crucial for leadership
for steering companies in the right
directions
let’s be real emotions are really
difficult to talk about let alone manage
for a start they can’t be graded or even
quantified so
schools aren’t teaching us about them
emotions are messy
inconvenient and make us feel really
vulnerable
and girls are usually judged to be way
more emotional than boys
even though statistically men and women
have equal capacities for eq
it’s true that men and women are
hardwired differently
meaning that we have different
neuroanatomies or brain structures
which means that we think and behave
differently
at a basic level but that doesn’t mean
we can’t learn from one another
women have a natural tendency to be more
empathetic
better interpersonal relationships and
more socially responsible
which are all indicators of emotional
intelligence
whilst men score higher in areas of
assertiveness
stress tolerance and self-regard which
are also
emotionally intelligent traits but
surely
women can be more assertive and men can
be more empathetic i mean
why not stereotypes
that’s why not leaders such as gandhi
martin luther king and nelson mandela
all had empathy and in my opinion
were all true examples of men
female leaders today such as german
chancellor angela merkel
new zealand prime minister jacinda
ardern or vice president kamala harris
are all really assertive confident and
composed
especially in stressful situations
none of these emotionally intelligent
traits are reserved for either gender
in the same way that stem subjects don’t
need to be just for boys
all these skills from iq to eq can be
learned
if that’s what you want to learn for
yourself
so where do we go to get an education on
emotions
einstein said that education is what
remains after one has forgotten
what they’ve learned at school and you
know what i couldn’t agree more
i had to get a wholesome einstein
education
through reverse engineering reverse
engineering myself
reverse engineering is a process where
engineers take a device apart let’s say
an airplane and they study every single
component of their aeroplane in massive
detail
to either make an exact copy of that
plane or further improve components to
make a better plane
maybe one that flies faster or higher on
less fuel
for me about eight years ago i found
myself with a great college education
and fantastic career prospects
but absolutely no meaning or purpose in
life
earning loads of money and accumulating
status symbols like clothes and
cars and holidays just didn’t feel
fulfilling enough
through reverse engineering myself i
took myself apart
and examined every aspect of my life in
great detail from my job
to the people in my life to the dynamics
between me and my family
i even analyzed my values ambitions and
dreams
it was a proper self-introspection and
at many moments
it was confusing and uncomfortable and
messy
[Music]
but my iq and my eq had become so
detached from one another
that i had to make that journey back
from my head
to my heart sometimes life can get so
busy for us that we don’t
ever get to do this kind of
self-analysis the day-to-day rigmarole
of our lives can turn us into machines
where we just eat sleep
and work eat sleep and work
we can get so distracted by our to-do
list
that we don’t have time to feel our
emotions or be fully present for our
lives
a caterpillar does the exact same thing
it just munches its way through as many
leaves as it can
until one day it stops eating it hangs
itself upside down and spins itself into
a cocoon
after some time in this cocoon it grows
parts of itself
that it never had before like wings
and when the time is right it’s then
ready to break free
so it wriggles and tussles its way out
of that cocoon
struggle to escape is essential for
building strength in its brand new wings
and eventually it flies away from its
former self
as an iridescent butterfly it’s one of
nature’s greatest transformations
and something similar to the process i
went through as i reverse
engineered myself everything i thought i
wanted i had
and everything my parents hoped for me
i’d already achieved
so i turned my life upside down and
spent several years in a
cocoon through meditations and
long road trips through america where i
was living at the time
and plucking up the courage to go on
dates by myself
i was reawakening parts of me that i had
shut down
in order to excel academically
i explored my ability to paint to create
to perform
and i spent a lot of time journaling my
thoughts
i did acting courses made wall collages
out of
old magazines and created a podcast
where i listened to other people’s
stories and experiences
i did things that couldn’t be marked
graded or stereotyped
and all throughout i broadened my
awareness of my outer and inner
experiences
companies are recognizing the positive
global impact on life experiences
on business success they’re hiring more
and more diverse and inclusive teams
because
people from all backgrounds cultures and
traditions
bring different perspectives to the
table and it’s emotions
that determine our experiences what we
think
and feel can be the difference between a
good experience and a bad one
it’s all about our attitude the breakup
of a relationship
the jobs we didn’t get and the friends
that led us down all seem like
personal catastrophes really bad
experiences
that were just there at the time
but looking back they were actually
blessings
because they nudged us in directions
that we hadn’t planned for ourselves
all experiences good and bad have shaped
me who
into who i am today and my school
education was just a small part of that
jigsaw puzzle
my attitudes towards my past present and
future
are at the steering wheel of my life now
and it’s life
that’s teaching me how to drive remember
in maths class where the teacher didn’t
want to just see the answer
but actually all of the workings out
reverse engineering allowed me to
explore all of my workings out
we put far too much emphasis on getting
that right answer
but the journey is way more important
than the destination
that cheesy saying that never seems to
get old
i wish emotional intelligence was taught
in schools and i also wish that students
had the time
to get messy and fail i’ve learned so
much from my own mistakes
rejection disappointment and loss have
all been my greatest teachers
and are all part of the turbulence we go
through to reach
higher and higher heights
but let’s be grateful for the education
that we all get to have
from the school of life it’s not
essential that we have
the most prestigious educations or
perfect parents or
privileged childhoods what is essential
is gaining self-awareness to learn from
every experience we’ve had so that our
lives are full of meaning
and purpose for me reverse engineering
myself
gave me a greater sense of who i am
which means going forward
i have a better chance of choosing
exactly who
and how i want to be self-awareness and
emotional intelligence is where we build
self-esteem and
where we gain the self-confidence and
self-belief
to flip off the stereotypes
martin luther king said we must remember
that intelligence is not enough
intelligence plus character that’s the
goal
of true education the complete education
gives one not only power of
concentration
but worthy objectives upon which to
concentrate
yes iq is important but so is eq
and everybody is on their own individual
journeys with that
concentrate on your own transformation
from caterpillar to butterfly
and you too can reach your very own
cruising altitude
thank you