IGP Hosts Career Conversation Roundtable with Girls Who Code and Moms First Founder Reshma Saujani

On February 27, IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Reshma Saujani joined a career conversation roundtable, sponsored by SIPA’s Institute of Global Politics (IGP), to discuss career paths with students and SIPA Professor Yasmine Ergas, director of the gender and public policy specialization and IGP Faculty Advisory Board member. Saujani, a bestselling author, advocate, and social entrepreneur, is the founder of Girls Who Code and the founder and CEO of Moms First.

“Failure is a privilege for men. Only when you fail do you learn,” Saujani told the room full of students. Ergas added that “women are often paralyzed by fear of failure, by an idea that they always need to be perfect. Environments that punish failure get less creative and less civil liberties.”

Saujani observed a difference between how boys and girls are set up to handle failure from a young age. Boys, she argued, were encouraged to push themselves until they failed, but girls were often protected from failure. Speaking to an audience of women, she said, “Your parents probably never got you to the point of failure.” That trait becomes a disservice because it discourages taking risks.

Saujani noted her failures, pursuing opportunities at Yale Law School and running for Congress. After successive attempts, she eventually got into Yale Law School but did not win a seat in Congress. She built Girls Who Code to close the gender gap in entry-level tech jobs by teaching AI and data science courses to women, designing it around iteration – learning from failures until students no longer made the same mistakes. She came to view failure and recovery as changing her approach from competing with others to competing with oneself.

“Pursue excellence, not perfection,” she advised the women in the room.

A student observed that they often tend to over-prepare to feel they belong. Saujani thought this so-called “imposter syndrome” was a reaction to working in male-dominated environments but could be part of the problem. She noted: “We’re in a dangerous place across the world for women’s rights, and we can’t keep doing what we did before. Women are 75 percent of high school valedictorians and the majority of PhDs. The data doesn’t add up when we question our intelligence or merit.” Deep down, she added, “We’re still searching for approval, we’re still little girls wanting boys to like us.”

Fundamentally, she said, people respect authenticity but see very few examples of women who are confident and genuine. “There is no finish line for women,” she said. “It’s never done, especially for gender work, you make progress and then someone takes it back.”