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She had never lost a race,
and no one had really even run against her in a Democratic primary.
But in my mind, this was my way
to make a difference,
to disrupt the status quo.
The polls, however, told a very different story.
My pollsters told me that I was crazy to run,
that there was no way that I could win.
01:01
But I ran anyway,
and in 2012, I became an upstart in a New York City congressional race.
I swore I was going to win.
I had the endorsement from the New York Daily News,
the Wall Street Journal snapped pictures of me on election day,
and CNBC called it one of the hottest races in the country.
I raised money from everyone I knew,
including Indian aunties
that were just so happy an Indian girl was running.
But on election day, the polls were right,
and I only got 19 percent of the vote,
and the same papers that said I was a rising political star
now said I wasted 1.3 million dollars
on 6,321 votes.
Don't do the math.
It was humiliating.
01:55
Now, before you get the wrong idea,
this is not a talk about the importance of failure.
Nor is it about leaning in.
I tell you the story of how I ran for Congress
because I was 33 years old
and it was the first time in my entire life
that I had done something that was truly brave,
where I didn't worry about being perfect.
02:20
And I'm not alone:
so many women I talk to tell me
that they gravitate towards careers and professions
that they know they're going to be great in,
that they know they're going to be perfect in,
and it's no wonder why.
Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure.
We're taught to smile pretty,
play it safe, get all A's.
Boys, on the other hand,
are taught to play rough, swing high,
crawl to the top of the monkey bars and then just jump off headfirst.
And by the time they're adults,
whether they're negotiating a raise or even asking someone out on a date,
they're habituated to take risk after risk.
They're rewarded for it.
It's often said in Silicon Valley,
no one even takes you seriously unless you've had two failed start-ups.
In other words,
we're raising our girls to be perfect,
and we're raising our boys to be brave.
03:20
Some people worry about our federal deficit,
but I, I worry about our bravery deficit.
Our economy, our society, we're just losing out
because we're not raising our girls to be brave.
The bravery deficit is why women are underrepresented in STEM,
in C-suites, in boardrooms, in Congress,
and pretty much everywhere you look.
03:45
In the 1980s, psychologist Carol Dweck
looked at how bright fifth graders handled an assignment
that was too difficult for them.
She found that bright girls were quick to give up.
The higher the IQ, the more likely they were to give up.
Bright boys, on the other hand,
found the difficult material to be a challenge.
They found it energizing.
