"A Seat at the Table" Isn't the Solution for Gender Equity | Lilly Singh | TED

547,270 views ・ 2022-03-07

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:04
So when I was born on September 26, 1988,
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my grandparents and great grandparents back in India
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didn't find out for two weeks,
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which is a shame because I mean, look how perfect I was.
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(Laughter)
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And it's not because the phone lines were down
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or because they weren't available.
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It's because there was a complication with my birth.
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And that complication was being assigned female at birth.
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You see, because my mom had been told that if she gave birth to a daughter,
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it wasn't worth phoning home about.
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After all, she’d already given birth to my older sister,
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and this time everyone had high hopes that she would do right and have a son.
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But she didn't.
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She had me.
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And so there were no congratulations or Indian sweets sent our way.
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Just the reality that from the moment I came into this world,
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I was already a disappointment to so many people.
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It's as if they had a time machine
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and already knew the trajectory of my entire career and life
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and decided that I had less to offer.
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And it sucked.
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So why am I telling you this heavy story?
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I'm supposed to be a funny person.
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I have the nerve to come out here and hit you right in the feels.
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How dare I?
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I'm telling you this because although this is my lived experience,
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it's also the reality that millions of girls face every day
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across every culture and in every country.
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And I'm telling you this because being born into this reality
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set me on a lifetime mission of trying to prove myself
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and just feel like I was enough.
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What did I want to be when I grow up?
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I wanted to be treated equally.
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And I'm not alone in this mission.
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In fact, us girls, what we desperately want
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is a seat at the table.
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It's what every motivational poster, Tumblr post, Instagram account you follow,
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business card tells us:
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Success is a seat at the table.
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And if they want to be extra spicy,
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they say, "If there is no seat, drag your own seat."
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I'm sure you've heard this, right?
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And so my marching orders were clear.
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Get a seat at this coveted table by any means necessary.
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And that's been the driving force behind my entire career.
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Now, in 2010,
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I noticed that no one on YouTube looked like me.
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There was no South Asian woman who's very loud and uses her hands a lot,
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giving her take on the world.
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There was no me in front of a camera.
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I saw a seat up for grabs.
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So I got to work, and I started a channel under the name “Superwoman.”
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Yeah, because although I’m smart enough to do a TED Talk,
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I'm not smart enough to understand copyright.
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(Laughter)
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I taught myself how to write,
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shoot and edit my own content.
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And I worked really hard.
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When I finally got the hang of it,
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I committed to posting two comedy videos a week.
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And I found success.
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With a backwards snapback on my head,
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I gave my take on relationships, pop culture, taboo subjects
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and, most popularly, dressed up like my parents.
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(Laughter)
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I can't tell you how many times I forgot to wipe that chest hair off.
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A lot of times.
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(Laughter)
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Now fast forward to 2015,
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and I'm on stage in India announcing my first world tour.
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As fate would have it,
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the day after this monumental milestone,
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I was set to fly to Punjab, India
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to visit my grandfather for the first time in my adult life.
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And whoo, nothing could have prepared me
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for what was about to happen.
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I vividly remember it.
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I was in the car driving to his house.
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He was standing outside.
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I nervously got out of the car, walked up to him.
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He walked up to me, looked me right in the eyes,
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and he raised his hand
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and decorated me with a flower garland:
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a gesture fit for people of importance.
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He then proceeded to welcome me into his home, my mom by my side,
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and proceed to show me all the newspaper clippings he had saved
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with my name and face on them.
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He said the words he was wrong.
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Words I had never heard a man say before to me.
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He said that I had done what no one else could have done,
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and I had made the family name proud.
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Me, Lilly, the baby born a girl.
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That's right.
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Now in that moment I truly felt like Superwoman.
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I did.
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You know, through my YouTube videos,
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I've amassed almost 15 million subscribers and three billion views.
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But more important than all of that,
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I managed to change one view.
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I challenged my grandfather's entrenched gender beliefs.
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And for the first time in my life, I remember thinking in that moment,
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“Oh, I finally got a seat at the table ...”
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Hello, props.
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(Laughter)
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" ... alongside the men in the industry.”
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I felt like that.
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And encouraged by my grandfather's approval,
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I became more confident in my influence.
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I remember thinking, "Oh, I'm going to talk at this table,
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I'm going to join the dinner conversation."
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You know, a lot of my male mentors make comments and posts
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about box office numbers and salaries and titles
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and those dollar dollar bills.
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So I thought,
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I'm going to chime in here.
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I learned very quickly that whenever I spoke of money,
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people got a little uncomfortable.
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Like the time I pointed out the gender gap
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in the Forbes list for online creators,
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a list I'd previously been on.
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I remember wanting to start a critical conversation
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because I saw this article and I was heartbroken.
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You know, the digital space had always been a place
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that I thought was without gatekeepers.
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And here it was looking just like old Hollywood.
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Well, let me tell you, the internet was not interested.
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I don't know how it's possible,
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but it literally felt as if Twitter leaped through my screen
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and body slammed me onto my desk.
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The message was clear:
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you can be on this list,
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but don't try to start any conversations about the inequality on this list.
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I have thousands and thousands of videos.
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One of my most disliked videos is why I’m not in a relationship.
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Yeah.
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A lot of the men at the table did not like me telling them
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why I didn't need a boyfriend.
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I quickly learned
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that there’s an invisible gatekeeper called culture,
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and the table is smack dab in the middle of it.
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Now, in 2019,
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I made history with my late-night show,
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“A Little Late with Lilly Singh.”
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Thank you, thank you.
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(Applause)
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There I was, Lilly, the baby born a brown girl,
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rubbing elbows, or at least time slots,
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with comedy royalty.
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And I got to give a huge shout out to NBC
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for boldly trying to break late-night tradition.
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I remember when the show came out,
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I remember all the articles because they looked practically identical.
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"Bisexual Woman of Color Gets Late-Night Show."
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I almost legally changed my name to "bisexual woman of color"
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because that's what people called me so often.
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And you know, as strange as that sentiment was, I thought, OK,
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the silver lining is that we'll finally get a different perspective in late-night.
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A little bit of melanin, a dash of queer,
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a different take on things.
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Let's do this!
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And I remember thinking,
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"Now, oh, now I've been invited to the big table.
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And now things will be different."
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So I took my seat.
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Now, unfortunately,
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the budget wasn't based on the importance or significance
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or historic nature of the show.
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It was based on the 1:30am time-slot that we had.
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So to say the budget was small,
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the writing staff even smaller,
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and to do the first season,
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I had to shoot 96 episodes of late-night television in three months.
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Audience: Whoo.
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LS: Whoo is right.
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To put that into perspective,
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that is shooting two to three episodes a day
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versus the network standard of one a day,
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maybe two on Thursday.
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We did it all with a writing staff of about half a dozen writers
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versus the network standard that's about double that.
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Words cannot explain to you how exhausting,
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emotionally and spiritually challenging that was.
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And I started to feel like,
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"Hm, I think this chair's a little wobbly."
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Now, I think we can all agree
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that the beauty and magic of late-night is its timeliness.
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You know that no matter what's happening in the world,
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you can turn on late-night television and hear all about it.
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But when you shoot 96 episodes in three months,
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you kind of lose that magic.
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I was the only show talking about hooking up, partying, cuddling, traveling,
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in front of a live audience during a literal global pandemic.
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Now, still, I thought,
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if the budget doesn't celebrate the historicness of the show,
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then the creative can.
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I can bring some much needed spice to late-night.
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And sometimes I was successful.
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But other times,
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I would receive notes like,
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"Don't be so loud."
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"Don't be so big."
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"Don't be so angry, smile more."
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And my all time favorite,
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"Don't overindex on the South Asian stuff."
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After all, everyone else at the table who's been sitting there for years,
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people are used to them.
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I might be a little jarring to audiences.
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Now, during season two of my show,
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I remember I went into overdrive.
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I found all the loopholes, I did all the necessary jobs
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to try to make the show more timely.
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And I was excited to.
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And I felt compelled to because for the first time in history,
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we had a woman, not to mention half South Asian woman,
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become vice president of the United States.
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Now we witnessed one of the greatest protests in human history
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with the farmer protests in India.
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And I was excited to finally give my take on these things.
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But my take was almost never included
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in topical media news coverage round-ups.
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You know, we still got the same voices,
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the same perspectives,
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even though someone and something different
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was literally in the next time slot.
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I kept trying to pull up my seat.
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I kept trying to join the dinner conversation.
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I kept trying to ask for a more supportive seat.
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But every time I would be told
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that I should be grateful to have a seat in the first place.
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After all, everyone else that looks like me
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is still waiting outside the restaurant in the cold.
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You know, the strange thing about having a wobbly seat
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is that you spend so much time trying to keep it upright
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that you can never bring your full self to the table.
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So now, why am I telling you all this?
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Well, because my therapist costs 200 dollars an hour
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and this is way cheaper.
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(Laughter)
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But also because I just experienced
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one of the most notorious boys' clubs ever in late-night television.
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And I'm here to offer solutions.
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I don't always follow up a venting session with solutions,
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but when I do, it’s a TED Talk.
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(Laughter)
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That's right.
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(Applause)
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You see, my goal was always a seat at the table.
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It's what women are conditioned to believe success is.
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And when the chair doesn't fit,
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when it doesn't reach the table, when it's wobbly,
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when it's full of splinters,
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we don't have the luxury of fixing it or finding another one.
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But we try anyways.
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We take on that responsibility, and we shoulder that burden.
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Now, I've been fortunate enough to sit at a few seats,
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at a few different tables.
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And what I've learned is, when you get the seat,
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trying to fix the seat won't fix the problem.
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Why?
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Because the table was never built for us in the first place.
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The solution?
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Build better tables.
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(Applause)
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So, allow me to be your very own IKEA manual.
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I would like to present to you a set of guidelines
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I very eloquently call:
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“How to Build a Table that Doesn’t Suck”.
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(Laughter)
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I've been told I'm very literal.
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Now, right off the bat, let me tell you,
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this assembly is going to take more than one person
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or group of people.
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It's going to take everyone.
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Are you ready? Should we dive in?
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Let's do it.
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Up first,
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don't weaponize gratitude.
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Now, don't get me wrong, gratitude is a great word.
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It's nice, it's fluffy, a solid 11 points in Scrabble.
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However, let's be clear.
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Although gratitude feels warm and fuzzy,
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it's not a form of currency.
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Women are assigned 10 percent more work
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and spend more time on unrewarded,
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unrecognized and non-promotable tasks.
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Basically, what this means is
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all the things men don't want to do are being handed to women,
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and a lot of those things largely include things that advance inclusivity,
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equity and diversity in the workplace.
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So hear me when I say,
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a woman shouldn't be grateful to sit at a table.
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She should be paid to sit at a table.
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(Applause)
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Especially ones she largely helped build.
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And a woman's seat shouldn't be threatened if she doesn't seem "grateful" enough.
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In other words, corporations,
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this step involves a woman doing a job
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and being paid in money, opportunity and promotion,
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not just gratitude.
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And women -- yeah, go ahead, live it up, live your life.
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(Applause)
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And women, a moment of real talk,
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trust me, I've been there and I know it's so tough,
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but we have to understand and remember that being grateful
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and being treated fairly are not mutually exclusive.
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I can be grateful but still know exactly what I deserve.
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And that's the way to do it.
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14:13
(Applause)
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Up next, invest in potential.
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When investing in women,
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don’t invest in the 1:30am time slot.
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Invest in empowering something different.
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Invest in a new voice.
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Give them the support they actually need.
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Cultural change takes time and money.
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Heck, it took my grandfather 25 years to see that I was worthy of more.
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So a true investment is one that values potential over proof.
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Because so often that proof doesn't exist for women.
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Not because we aren't qualified,
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but because we haven't been given the opportunity.
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In other words,
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if you're trying to be inclusive,
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don't give someone new a seat made of straw
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until they prove they deserve a better one.
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Don't hold something called a "prove it again" bias,
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which requires less privileged people to constantly keep proving themselves,
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even though white men tend to get by on just their potential.
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Give them a seat that they can thrive in,
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that they can do the job you hired them to do in.
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Allow them to contribute to the table,
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and they will make it better.
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Up next, this is my favorite one.
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My favorite one, it's quite common sense, actually.
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Make space for us.
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You know, for every three men at a table,
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there's only one place setting for a woman.
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People are so used to more men showing up that they plan for it.
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There's an extra seat in the corner, there's a steak under the heat lamp.
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When more men show up, the table gets longer.
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But when that extra RSVP is a woman,
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more often than not
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she's encouraged to compete against the only other woman
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that was invited to the table.
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Instead, we need to build multiple seats for multiple women,
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not just one or two,
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16:03
so that women are not sitting on top of each other's laps,
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16:06
fighting for one meal.
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16:08
We already know that more diverse teams perform better.
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16:12
A recent study shows
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that corporations that have more gender diversity
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on their executive teams,
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were 25 percent more likely to experience above average profitability.
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And more racially diverse companies had 36 percent more profit.
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So really, no matter how you look at it,
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it's time to build longer tables and more seats.
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And I want to say something,
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and I want to admit something, I want to be vulnerable for a second.
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16:37
Because I've fallen victim to this so many times,
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16:40
and women, let me know if you've experienced this.
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16:42
We have to get rid of the scarcity mindset and champion each other,
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you know, because I've learned what's the better win?
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Me sitting at a table
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or us sitting at a table?
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Don't be convinced to fight for one spot.
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Instead fight for multiple spots.
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17:00
(Applause)
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And let me lead by example right now and say,
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I know there’s many other women that are going to come on this stage,
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17:11
and I hope they all nail it, and I will be cheering you all on
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because we can all win.
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And I'm going to be your biggest cheerleader when you're up here.
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(Applause)
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Last, it's time to upgrade the table talk.
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Now, I believe stories make the world go around.
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17:27
You thought it had something to do the solar system?
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17:30
Joke's on you, it's stories.
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17:31
(Laughs)
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Stories are how we understand ourselves,
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17:34
how we understand others and how we understand the world.
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And arguably the most important stories are those we see in the media.
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Because we’ve seen time and time that they control the narrative
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17:45
and impact culture.
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Now, when it comes to genre,
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you can argue that certain genres have certain target demographics.
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When it comes to the world news, the target demographic is the world,
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17:58
and we know half of the world is female.
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18:01
Yet women and girls make up only a quarter of the people interviewed
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18:05
or that the news is even about in the first place.
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18:08
Instead, when it comes to issues that impact women,
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18:11
we not only need to be included in the coverage,
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18:14
we need to be driving those stories and dimensionalizing our own experience.
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18:18
Inviting everyone in on the table talk isn't just a nice gesture.
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18:21
It makes for better, more productive, smarter conversation
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18:25
with more than one point of view.
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18:27
And that's how you get better.
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18:30
So this all sounds like a lot of work.
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And it is.
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But I'm going to tell you why it's necessary and worth it.
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18:39
To be honest, this is about so much more than just women in the workplace.
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18:44
In fact, I could probably come up with many more guidelines
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across many other industries.
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This is about creating a world where half of the population can thrive.
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18:54
You see, because the work we do today
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18:56
can create a world where future generations of girls
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18:59
can have equitable access and opportunity.
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19:02
And here's the best part. Are you ready for it?
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Everyone listening today, all the men, the women,
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19:06
everyone in between, the big companies, the small ones, the media outlets,
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19:10
the people that snuck into the back, all of you,
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19:12
you can help create this future.
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19:14
A future where we have longer tables
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19:17
and more seats that actually work
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19:20
instead of fighting for a seat at the old ones that don't.
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19:24
A future where everyone is seated at the table equally.
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19:29
And a future
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where being assigned female at birth is not a disappointment
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or a disadvantage,
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19:36
because girls are encouraged,
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19:38
empowered and expected to do great things.
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And I can't wait to make that a reality.
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Thank you so much.
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19:47
(Applause and cheers)
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6465
About this website

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