It's Elise Hugh, you're listening to TED Talks Daily. I don't want to give too much of this talk away because it's most powerfully told by Paula Stone Williams, the speaker, who shares her insights from the stage at TEDx Mile High in 2017. What I will say is it's about the difference between gender equality and gender equity.

As she points out, we may have equality, but not equity. And it's way past time that all of us

work for both. I was the CEO of a large, religious, non-profit, the host of a national television show. I preached

in megachurches. I was a successful, well-educated, white, American male. I knew from the time I was

three or four years of age I was transgender. In my naivete, I thought I got to the time I was three or four years of age I was transgender.

In my naivete, I thought I got to choose.

I thought a gender fairy would arrive and say,

okay, the time has come.

But alas, no, gender fairy arrived.

So I just lived my life.

I didn't hate being a boy.

I just knew I wasn't one. Went to college, got

married, had kids, built a career. But the call toward authenticity has all the subtlety of a smoke

alarm. And eventually, decisions have to be made. So I came out as transgender, and I lost all of my jobs.

I had never had a bad review, and I lost every single job.

It's not easy being a transgender woman.

People sometimes ask, do you feel 100% like a woman? And I say, well, if you've talked to one

transgender person, you've talked to exactly one transgender person. I can't speak for anybody else.

I feel 100% like a transgender woman. There are things a cisgender woman knows I will never know.

That said, I am learning a lot about what it means to be a female,

and I'm learning a lot about my former gender.

I have the unique experience of having lived life from both sides,

...