How to Get Girls to Become Engineers

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/19/goldieblox_commercial_rewrites_the_beastie_boys_urges_young_girls_to_pursue.html

                I read an article about a commercial for the female toy company GoldieBlox. When I watched the video  I instantly thought of the article "X: A Fabulous Child's Story" and our class discussions about girls' verses boys' toys. Even though this was not this week's discussion I think this video is too cool to not write about. The video, which is in the article listed above, shows three girls who build a giant Rube Goldberg machine while a remix of the song "Girls" by The Beastie Boys is playing. The song instead is sung by girls who are singing about not wanting to play with stereotypical pink, glittery toys. The girls want to play with engineering type toys that challenge their mind, which is why they build and set off a giant Rube Goldberg machine. The founder of GoldieBlox, Debbie Sterling, studied engineering and was disappointed by the lack of female presence in the field. She decided to start the toy company to add construction toys "from a female perspective" in the girls' toy isle in hopes of drawing girls toward the field of engineering. Making the construction toys pink and girly still plays into the socially accepted gender norms of what a little girl should play with. If a girl were to play with the exact same toy that was not pink it would be seen as crossing the line over into a toy for a boy.

                When I first watched the video I thought of how female gender norms were shaping little girls lives and how the new female engineering toys would help change this. After I thought about it more I realized the video also plays into the article "The Penny Pinch" because it is trying to solve the problem with women not being present in high paying fields. Debbie Sterling thinks she can solve this by introducing girls to the field  at a young age. I'm guessing Debbie does not think the lack of female presence is because other women cannot handle the stress, opps. I think it will be very interesting to see if more toys that are traditionally for boy will be transformed into girl toys and the effect that they might have in the future. If we see a rise in the number of female students fifteen years from now that are declaring engineering as their major then I think it would be more than safe to say that these types of toys really did have an effect on some young girls.