Woman Up How We Fight Against Gender Inequity
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
hello
for as long as i can remember i’ve had
to stand up for myself as a female
athlete
in lower school kids made fun of me for
playing sports at recess
oh there we go there was a line of
unsaid gender
expectations that split the playground
in half one side with girls on the
swings
and the other side with boys tackling
each other to the ground with a ball in
hand
now maybe i was just naive or maybe i
didn’t care
but every day when it came time for
recess i’d pick up my ball and march
right over that line on my way to a
court full of boys throughout the
tragically awkward years of middle
school
i remained confident in my athletic
abilities in seventh grade i finally
accepted that these six years of club
soccer under my belt
we’re not gonna let my thighs look like
the other girls instead my muscular legs
are what allowed me to
kick like a boy now i’ve lost track of
how many times people have
said that to me before why am i trying
to imitate a boy
better yet why should i idealize someone
you admit is my equal
and while i don’t think the coaches and
the parents who said those words to me
meant them in this malicious and sexist
way that phrase is
undeniably rooted in sexist
i don’t kick like a boy i kick like
sarah fuller
kick like abby womback alex morgan
i kick like megan hardesty
in high school i decided to use my
confidence to speak up where others
wouldn’t
and while pace has never done anything
intentionally sexist or purposely given
the boys teams
more opportunities than the girls teams
minor discrepancies between the girls
and the boys programs give off the
impression that the girls teams are less
important
one example of a small inequity was my
sophomore year
the boys basketball team practiced an
inman four days out of the week
and inman’s our main gym if you didn’t
know and the girls only got to practice
one day of the week
i and other girls on team feeling
frustrated with the lack of
consideration for our gym time
stood up and asked our coach if he could
work out a better practice schedule with
the boys coach
thankfully this year after the two
coaches had a conversation they evened
out the practice schedule
another example is before every home
game the boys basketball team takes up
half of our warm-up court even though
it’s an hour and a half before their
game
the only way for us to get them off the
court is to run across the court and
physically kick them off which
we do every game a more recent example
is our soccer game was not recorded but
the boys was
now the reason for this remains unclear
but the more important thing is that i
know the girls on the team stood up to
our coach and asked him to help us
ensure that this never happens again
and while gym time or unrecorded games
may come across as minor and unimportant
issues
they add up now in my experience in
today’s culture it’s
hard to find blatant and obvious gender
discrimination however women are
constantly and continuously working to
overcome the long-lasting effects of
sexism
and stereotypes a perfect example is
what’s happening with the ncaa
tournament right now
the girl’s only given a dumbbell rack
while the boys have an entire room
equipped with squat racks
and cardio equipment the best way for
me and for all of you to eliminate small
areas of gender and equity
is to confidently attack individual
issues such as
dumbbell racks unrecorded game film gym
time
now confronting individual issues with
requests and reasons for change
eliminates the possibility for us to be
ignored or for just to be handed a list
of excuses as to
why things were just the way they always
were now you may be seeing there
as a guy being like this doesn’t affect
me i don’t really know what i can do to
help or maybe you don’t even play sports
so you’re
you just don’t feel like it’s something
that you can help wrong
i’ll give you another example this week
i went up to my male soccer coach and i
said
hey declan sup you know i just want to
let you know i am going to be giving a
ted talk this weekend
about sexism within female athletics and
instead of being like oh megan that’s
not a thing that doesn’t happen you’re
presented so many opportunities by the
school which i am
he said what time is it i want to be
there to support you
he goes i’ve noticed it everyone else
has noticed it use your platform to
speak up
and stand up for yourself we need more
people like him
now to be completely honest i was
terrified to give this speech
and not just because i’m petrified of
public speaking as evident by my very
shaking hands right now
i was afraid that i was going to sound
like i was complaining ungrateful
rambling about issues that don’t really
matter i felt like i was sort of
cheating on this line of what i could
say
and what i couldn’t so to validate my
feelings
i talked to my teammates every single
person i spoke with whether on the
basketball team
the volleyball team the soccer team had
the similar feeling that their
respective sport received less attention
and fewer opportunities than the boys
teams did
those conversations gave me the
confidence to stand up here today
and challenge the status quo
unlike megan i was never really into
sports however
i was a theater kid for nine years of my
life as i grew up less and less boys
accompanied me
on my middle and elementary school
stages whether that be for
personal interest or american society’s
toxic standard of masculinity
i ended up in a female dominated
environment
but as years passed i realized my heart
wasn’t on the stage
but behind the camera i carried my
passion for film with me to a new school
ace academy here i was able to turn my
dreams into action
at pace i started the video program for
our school newspaper the nightly news in
which i create
videos about school events the student
body or even the newspaper staff
as a woman passionate about a male
dominated field
there are more eyes on you but there are
also more pressure
pressures on you to prove them wrong
about their misconceptions
as i reflected on my past years at pace
i wondered why i felt so
different in the pace film community was
it really because i was doing something
so unique then i realized
that all my film mentors and peers were
men
i felt like a pioneer not because i was
doing something completely different but
because i was one of the only girls to
do it
pace wasn’t the only place i found
myself to be alone as a girl in film
the summer after my freshman year i
interned with a major commercial film
company
and i loved every aspect of it but as a
strong
extrovert i wondered why i felt so
uncomfortable in the studio
then i realized i was literally the only
girl there
while i learned so much i was craving
something more from the film industry
and it wasn’t just for my passion for
film it was from my passion for female
empowerment
i want to personally see more successful
women in the industry
having someone that looks like you can
make a world of a difference
a female mentor would be able to aid me
in ways that i don’t have now
knowing women in the industry would
inspire me even further to do what i
love
even as the minority
i want other girls at pace to know who i
am so they can feel confident
enough to cross into a male-dominated
field and thrive
by helping younger girls in newspaper
learn how to create videos i feel like
the woman mentor i aspire to have
i want to inspire the next generation of
girls to have the confidence
that they need in everything they
attempt even if they feel alone
building confidence in young girls is a
difficult but essential task as women
are often belittled when they do
something they love whether it be
politics
music or film it gives people confidence
to know that they can achieve their
dreams regardless of their gender
throughout my film journey i never had a
mentor that looked like me but i didn’t
let that stop me because i knew if i did
other girls would be discouraged as well
i want to create a more equal
environment for the next generation of
female filmmakers an environment full of
female role models
in the next few years i will find myself
at a new school meeting new people who
don’t know me at all
i’ll make new friends interests and
hobbies but
i will continue to have the strength and
confidence i learned from my film
journey
simply by pursuing my passions whether
it be in leadership or art
regardless of what i look like i am
putting down sex adversities
i will not fall victim to the false
misconceptions or demeaning comments
about women
nor will i fall victim to the status quo
i will fight for my beliefs and follow
my dreams even if i am alone
as we face sexism within the status quo
we hope that you will join with us and
women up
[Applause]
i’m helen smith my name is christine
jacobson carter
shelby hill israel batista dala wideman
kate romero kate leach
nina i’m amalia have and i’m megan
hardesty
i always wanted to be some sort of
writer um whether it was literature
or journalism and so i ended up pursuing
a major in journalism in college
and worked for that in a year before
transitioning and going back to grad
school to get my master’s in education
i thought that i wanted to be a nurse
that i thought i wanted to be an
astronaut
and then i wanted to be a history
teacher
i loved the freedom that i had and
writing
in working in journalism but i found
that
i was doing something that i would be
doing every day for
the rest of my life and there wasn’t
really a sense of growth and change
and one of my favorite parts of my job
was the mentorship that i had with
my interns and so i ended up kind of
always having in the back of my mind the
idea of being an english teacher and so
i ended up going back to grad school to
get my degree
and now i’m here the first step to being
a confident woman is having goals for
yourself
and once you have those goals sticking
to them no matter what people have told
you what society has told you or if you
don’t get accepted into the specific
programs you wanted or the college you
wanted
and i think that american society along
with a lot of
other societies across the world have
always told women
to prioritize getting married being in
relationships and
being a mom and it’s really empowering
to see women who
want to have a career and want to grow
their career and
get their goals done do that and if a
woman chooses to have a professional
career and a family it just shows how
resilient and determined she is
that she can do both at the same time
i want to work in foreign service and i
would love to eventually one day be the
us ambassador to france
i want to be a computer scientist when i
grow up i
either want to be a marine biologist or
an exotic veterinarian
i want to go into academia so i want to
be
an english literature professor and like
researcher
i want to be a soccer player
[Music]
i think when i think of a boss i don’t
think of one person in particular
i think of more of a set of skills that
can be applied to any person
especially the ability to command a room
and demand respect
a boss is someone who provides structure
and
encouragement and parameters someone who
creates an environment
of cooperation and helpfulness
support my idea of a boss is someone
who like commands a room a boss is a
leader
in my opinion so outside of pace i
also own a business and we have three
yoga studio locations in atlanta
i have over 60 employees and so a lot of
times people call me the boss which
still sounds weird
so i guess my perspective is who i am as
a boss which is a leader and that
a leader needs to be the person that
everybody on their team can look to
but they also are willing to do
everything that
the people on your team do
like all the first ones are basically
boys and if i scroll down
basically the last ones are women it
makes me feel kind of
sad because women can be bosses too
it kind of disturbs me that a lot of
bosses are boys
and guys women can also be
awesome too being in education
it’s such a female-dominated field that
i never felt that um
i’ve worked at three different schools
in my career and never once have i felt
discriminated based on my gender but
since entering the business world
um i’ve encountered it a lot so i have
two male business partners
and there have been multiple times where
i’ve walked into a meeting room with a
prospective lawyer
or maybe somebody who’s going to help us
find our next real estate property
and they always look straight to the guy
shake their hands introduce themselves
and a lot of times i’m just ignored
and it’s not malicious or anything i
think they just assume that
i’m not important i don’t know how
things are for young women today but
that’s absolutely part of being
in companies in the academy and in
schools
like if you’re thinking about many
independent schools and i’m not talking
about pace specifically i’ve worked at
four or five
um most of the administration it’s men
most of the workers are women
so i think about that a lot um i also
think about
um the fact that i was passed over
routinely for promotions
when people who had worked at my company
i used to work in marketing for example
i’ve been there significantly less time
especially if they were male
when we deal with difficult situations
that i’m accused of
letting my emotions get the best of me
and
you know being challenged to be more
like my male partners or male employees
who
aren’t emotional when making decisions
um
even though i’ve seen them be equally
emotional
even subconsciously i dress a different
way at modio and conferences just
because i think
it makes it easier to get some of the
guys who we would call
quote unquote gravel hunters get in with
that crowd even if it means that you’re
the ones
just writing and you’re not the one
speaking in a room
once at a conference i wrote an entire
document
and handed it to someone that i was
working with because he said that he
wanted to add something to it
and he changed the title of it to fit
his own country that he was representing
and essentially presented it as his own
work
i’ve had times when somebody would be
like
why are you in this group you’re
supposed to be with the girls and i’d be
like well i can be in whatever group
he was mainly trying to be like well you
should be over there because you’re a
girl
and it’s easier and you can’t do these
hard things and
i tried to prove that i can do whatever
he can do
and better gender discrimination do you
mean
being told openly because i was a single
woman
i didn’t need to get paid as much for
doing the same work as a man was doing
because he had a family
do you mean being told that i really
shouldn’t have this office because a man
might need this
particular honor on his resume and i
wouldn’t need it
and i’m very thankful to pace that they
were really good about
nurturing female leadership
well i think tryhard seems to have kind
of a negative connotation
negative connotation negative
connotations it’s just saying that
someone works really hard
so i don’t think tryout is really an
insult it’s just
a compliment saying that you work really
hard
to do whatever you can do as hard as you
can without
trying to prove it to somebody else
you