Brave New World

“Some people worry about our federal deficit, but I worry about our bravery deficit,” Girls Who Code founder, Reshma Saujani, says, her eyes tracking around the room at Vancouver’s Tedx conference. “The bravery deficit is why women are underrepresented in STEM, in C-suites, in boardrooms, in Congress, and pretty much everywhere you look.” But what does the term “bravery deficit” even mean, and how do we, as leaders, fix it? Saujani has ideas.

On its surface, Girls Who Code provides a space for 3rd to 12th grade girls, who might not otherwise have the opportunity, to learn about computer programming. And, while the non-profit has given more than 300,000 girls the coding foundation they need to be competitive in college and beyond, Saujani says it’s the hidden magic of the program that makes the real difference. “I started a company to teach girls to code,” she says, “and what I found is that by teaching them to code, I had socialized them to be brave.” The process, however, wasn’t seamless.

We immediately see in our program our girls’ fear of not getting it right, of not being perfect… when the girls are learning how to code a student will call [the teacher] over and say, “I don’t know what code to write.” The teacher will look at her screen and see a blank text editor. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think her student spent the past 20 minutes staring at the screen. But if she presses undo a few times, she’ll see her student wrote code and then deleted it. She tried, she came close, but she didn’t get it exactly right. Instead of showing the progress she made, she’d rather show nothing at all. Perfection or bust.

This isn’t simply a problem for girls. A recent study by Hewlett Packard revealed that while men will apply for a job when they meet only 60% of the qualifications, women won’t apply unless they meet 100%. The same numbers apply when considering promotions or projects within a company. Saujani argues this is the direct result of socializing women to aspire to perfection instead of bravery. But, it isn’t simply a matter of encouraging women to take more chances. Women, she discovered, need certain criteria—what she calls the Three Pillars—to step beyond this socialized caution, and she has placed them at the center of the Girls Who Code curriculum.

1. Pillar 1: More Than Code – While her foundation teaches girls the mechanics of coding, Saujani also ensures her instructors teach the core concepts and underlying logic of everything they do. She encourages the girls to “dig deeper,” until they truly understand the mechanics and reasoning behind the coding language, and she praises her students for asking questions. When women are given the freedom to ask questions, and the information to understand the “whys” of what they are doing, they have the confidence to make decisions on their own and try new things.
2. Pillar 2: Sisterhood – Saujani implements community-building activities into each meeting, and asks her students to share both their failures and successes with one another. The students are reminded that win or lose, they have a team at their backs, and helping hands available when they get stuck. To encourage this mindset, Saujani praises good teamwork as highly as she praises successful code. When women feel a sense of belonging and support, they are more likely to be brave and take risks.
3. Pillar 3: Impact – Each Girls Who Code class completes an Impact Project, where the girls work together to use their new coding skills to address a real-world problem in their community. Time and again, Saujani has witnessed girls reaching beyond what they believed themselves capable of because they believed in the goal more than they feared the risk of trying. Women are highly motivated to step out of their comfort zones when they believe they can make a difference.   

​​When asked what has the greatest power to reduce the bravery deficit in women and create a more equal work environment, Saujani’s response is simple: good leadership. But, it requires understanding what uniquely motivates women to be brave, and then creating systems to provide it. “I say to leaders all the time, ‘You can create equity yourself. You can make those decisions.’” And, with a simple shift in perspective, we can, too.
           
International Women’s Day falls on March 8, 2021. As we consider this year’s theme, #ChooseToChallenge, we are reminded of the leaders we’ve had the privilege to teach, and of your tireless efforts to create a fairer world for those you lead. Thank you for all you do, and for making us your partner in this fight.
 
Are you wondering how to inspire bravery in your teams? Are you looking for ways to help them feel confident and informed? Let us share more leadership lessons from empowering leaders in an online workshop. You bring the team members, and we’ll create an immersive learning program, linking real-life examples with your individual workplace issues.
 
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