![A TEDx Intern lunch break playlist: Happy Galentine’s Day! 5 talks to help you celebrate the ladies in your life
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, the day we all love to love (or) hate, where we get to smother our loved ones with praise, adoration, and heart-shaped chocolates. But today, today is Galentine’s Day, the day created by the fictitious councilwoman Leslie Knope from the television show Parks and Recreation for women to honor the women in their life — and while, officially, this has nothing to do with TEDx — it is a favorite holiday of our editorial intern, who put together this playlist in its honor.
“What’s Galentine’s Day? Oh, it’s only the best day of the year. Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast-style. Ladies celebrate ladies.”—Leslie Knope
Here at TEDx we’re no strangers to the myriad of inventions, discoveries, and innovations women are contributing to the modern world, the challenges they face, and the ways they are facing them. Through the TEDxWomen program and thousands of standard TEDx events around the world, we know there are still Marie Curies, still Valentina Tereshkovs, and still Georgia O’Keeffes — the talks are proof.
So, in honor of Galentine’s Day, and hard-working, butt-kicking ladies everywhere, 5 TEDx Talks that Leslie Knope would be proud of:
Shabana Basij-Rasikh: Dare to educate Afghan girlsIn this talk at TEDxWomen 2012, Shabana Basij-Rasikh discusses how she and her sister risked their lives by going to a secret school after the Taliban outlawed school for girls in Afghanistan. Hers is a talk that will make you feel privileged to even have a chance to watch classmates throw spitballs in geometry class. A must-watch for anyone — male or female — who’s ever not wanted to get up and go to school.
Soap saves: Renée Botta at TEDxDUChangeRenée Botta works in improving sanitation measures in slums in Nairobi. When she learned of a woman in a neighboring slum making homemade soap, she thought the process would be a good way for community members to get involved in improving local sanitation — until she met Helen — a single mother who decided to not only make this special soap herself, but also to sell it, as a way to become financially independent and take her health, her family’s, and her community’s into her own hands.
A teen still just figuring it out: Tavi Gevinson at TEDxTeenIn this talk, 15-year-old Tavi Gevinson, the editor of Rookie magazine, discusses modern media’s portrayal of women, and her struggle to find portrayals of women that actually resemble real women she knows. When she looked at media representations of teen girls, she ran into the same dead ends, she says, so she decided to take matters into her own hands, and create a space where the content was not just aimed at teenage girls, but made by teenage girls as well.
I’m an astronaut … and a woman: Nicole Stott at TEDxSugarLandIn this inspiring talk from TEDxSugarLand, astronaut Nicole Stott tells her story of becoming an aeronautical engineer and going into space, drawing inspiration from the women who came before her. “I was usually the only girl in my [classes],” she says in her talk, “but I never really noticed it. I never noticed it unless somebody else pointed it out to me. And I think that’s because I was studying something I loved to do, and all the people around me were studying something they love to do as well.”
Why you fear math: Laura Overdeck at TEDxWestVillageWomenIn this talk, mathematician Laura Overdeck explains how adults reinforce the stereotype that boys are naturally better at math and science than girls. “If you give men and women a quiz with math,” she says, “and for some of them, at the beginning they’re asked to check off their gender … the women who have on their test [the question] asking them to check off their gender, do worse than the women who didn’t have that question. Just being reminded that you’re female makes you do worse on a math test.” She has ideas to change this — just watch.
Bonus: TEDWomen talks from Ms. Knope’s heroes, Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton:
Madeleine Albright: On being a woman and a diplomat
Hillary Clinton’s surprise TEDWomen talk on empowering women and girls
Photo via Salon.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/0f7867060a85f237a11fdc4e31b30291/tumblr_mi47v0Ur611qedf7ko1_r6_500.jpg)
A TEDx Intern lunch break playlist: Happy Galentine’s Day! 5 talks to help you celebrate the ladies in your life
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, the day we all love to love (or) hate, where we get to smother our loved ones with praise, adoration, and heart-shaped chocolates. But today, today is Galentine’s Day, the day created by the fictitious councilwoman Leslie Knope from the television show Parks and Recreation for women to honor the women in their life — and while, officially, this has nothing to do with TEDx — it is a favorite holiday of our editorial intern, who put together this playlist in its honor.
“What’s Galentine’s Day? Oh, it’s only the best day of the year. Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast-style. Ladies celebrate ladies.”
—Leslie Knope
Here at TEDx we’re no strangers to the myriad of inventions, discoveries, and innovations women are contributing to the modern world, the challenges they face, and the ways they are facing them. Through the TEDxWomen program and thousands of standard TEDx events around the world, we know there are still Marie Curies, still Valentina Tereshkovs, and still Georgia O’Keeffes — the talks are proof.
So, in honor of Galentine’s Day, and hard-working, butt-kicking ladies everywhere, 5 TEDx Talks that Leslie Knope would be proud of:
Shabana Basij-Rasikh: Dare to educate Afghan girls
In this talk at TEDxWomen 2012, Shabana Basij-Rasikh discusses how she and her sister risked their lives by going to a secret school after the Taliban outlawed school for girls in Afghanistan. Hers is a talk that will make you feel privileged to even have a chance to watch classmates throw spitballs in geometry class. A must-watch for anyone — male or female — who’s ever not wanted to get up and go to school.
Soap saves: Renée Botta at TEDxDUChange
Renée Botta works in improving sanitation measures in slums in Nairobi. When she learned of a woman in a neighboring slum making homemade soap, she thought the process would be a good way for community members to get involved in improving local sanitation — until she met Helen — a single mother who decided to not only make this special soap herself, but also to sell it, as a way to become financially independent and take her health, her family’s, and her community’s into her own hands.
A teen still just figuring it out: Tavi Gevinson at TEDxTeen
In this talk, 15-year-old Tavi Gevinson, the editor of Rookie magazine, discusses modern media’s portrayal of women, and her struggle to find portrayals of women that actually resemble real women she knows. When she looked at media representations of teen girls, she ran into the same dead ends, she says, so she decided to take matters into her own hands, and create a space where the content was not just aimed at teenage girls, but made by teenage girls as well.
I’m an astronaut … and a woman: Nicole Stott at TEDxSugarLand
In this inspiring talk from TEDxSugarLand, astronaut Nicole Stott tells her story of becoming an aeronautical engineer and going into space, drawing inspiration from the women who came before her. “I was usually the only girl in my [classes],” she says in her talk, “but I never really noticed it. I never noticed it unless somebody else pointed it out to me. And I think that’s because I was studying something I loved to do, and all the people around me were studying something they love to do as well.”
Why you fear math: Laura Overdeck at TEDxWestVillageWomen
In this talk, mathematician Laura Overdeck explains how adults reinforce the stereotype that boys are naturally better at math and science than girls. “If you give men and women a quiz with math,” she says, “and for some of them, at the beginning they’re asked to check off their gender … the women who have on their test [the question] asking them to check off their gender, do worse than the women who didn’t have that question. Just being reminded that you’re female makes you do worse on a math test.” She has ideas to change this — just watch.
Bonus: TEDWomen talks from Ms. Knope’s heroes, Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton:
- Madeleine Albright: On being a woman and a diplomat
- Hillary Clinton’s surprise TEDWomen talk on empowering women and girls
Photo via Salon.
TEDxWomen is this weekend. To celebrate, we revisit one of our favorite TEDWomen talks: co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, on a big, but often-ignored problem facing women today — sleep deprivation.
After fainting from exhaustion at her desk, suffering a broken cheekbone as well as a gash on her eye, Arianna soon realized that sleep deprivation is an issue far more serious than the complaints and brags at the water cooler of how much sleep we aren’t getting.
“We women are going to lead the way in this new revolution, this new feminist issue,” she says. “We are literally going to sleep our way to the top.
…Because unfortunately for men, sleep deprivation has become a virility symbol…I have a feeling that if Lehman Brothers was Lehman Brothers and Sisters, they might still be around. While all the brothers were busy just being hyper-connected 24/7, maybe a sister would have noticed the iceberg, because she would have woken up from a seven-and-a-half- or eight-hour sleep and have been able to see the big picture.”
In response to Arianna’s argument, we asked organizers of some of the 140 TEDxWomen events that will be hosted worldwide around the webcast of TEDxWomen — what stops them from getting enough sleep. Here are some of their answers:
Carving out the time.
—Dora Chomiak, TEDxWestVillageWomen
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Being an individual who has too many hobbies. Work, performances, sports training, volunteer work, club meetings, etc. keep me going non-stop.
—Uyanga Vladimir, TEDxUlaanbaatarWomen
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Most often, a snoring husband and evening meetings that leave my mind racing with ideas.
—Carrie Willar, TEDxABQWomen
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Spending a great, enjoyable time with my laptop…for midnight brainstorms, reading, chatting, watching videos, sharing ideas, throwing out ideas.
—Deni Simeonova, TEDxMladostWomen
Why we have too few women leaders: TEDxWomen explores
At TEDWomen in 2010, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg looked at why a smaller percentage of women than men reach the top of their professions — and offered 3 powerful pieces of advice to women aiming for the C-suite in her talk, “Why we have too few women leaders.”
In the talk, she voices her concern over the worldwide lack of women in leadership roles — in corporate, political, and other social settings.
“The question is,” she says, “how are we going to fix this? How do we change these numbers at the top? How do we make this different? …What are the messages we need to tell ourselves? What are the messages we tell the women who work with and for us? What are the messages we tell our daughters?”
She addresses fear, self-doubt, work/life balance, and finding work that’s rewarding even after maternity leave. She questions traditional gender roles and perceptions of women leaders. She explains current setbacks and problems:
“Women systematically underestimate their own abilities,” she tells the audience. “If you test men and women, and you ask them questions on totally objective criteria like GPAs, men get it wrong slightly high, and women get it wrong slightly low..If you ask men why they did a good job, they’ll say, “I’m awesome. Obviously. Why are you even asking?” If you ask women why they did a good job, what they’ll say is someone helped them, they got lucky, they worked really hard. Why does this matter? Boy, it matters a lot because no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side, not at the table, and no one gets the promotion if they don’t think they deserve their success, or they don’t even understand their own success.
In response to Sheryl’s pointed challenge, we asked organizers of the upcoming TEDxWomen event — during which over 140 TEDx events will be hosted worldwide around the webcast of this year’s TEDxWomen anchor event in Washington D.C. — what advice they would give to women leaders. Here are some of their answers:
Re-imagine what leadership looks like, and make it your own.
—Nathalie Molina Niño, TEDxBarnardCollegeWomen, New York, NY
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Be authentic. Authenticity is always the key to leadership success.
—Dafna Michaelson Jene, TEDxCrestmoorParkWomen, Denver, CO
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Own your choices!
—Deb Gerardi Kemper, TEDxShanghaiWomen, Shanghai
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Create your own girls’ clubs: investment, leadership, philanthropy, mentoring, specific interests. Link with others regionally. Scale out. Find ways to give away what you know to people who value you in original ways. Listen. Know yourself and be you.
—Kat Haber, TEDxHomerWomen, Homer, AK
