Debbie Sterling, the founder and CEO of US toy company GoldieBlox, has introduced a new set of toys for young girls that aim to encourage their problem solving abilities and inspire them to become the next generation’s engineers!
The issues of gender-stereotyping in the way children’s toys are sold and advertised have been challenged on large this year, with Sweden’s Toys ‘R’ Us catologue printing pictures such as girls with nerf guns and boys feeding toy babies, and a host of petitions calling for toy companies to stop marketing gender stereotypes to children. Now, new US company GoldieBlox have joined the mix, with their brand new set of toys designed to create the next generation of girl engineers.
Debbie Sterling graduated in Mechanical Engineering/Product Design from Stanford University and, ‘bothered by how few women there were in her programme, became obsessed with the notion of “disrupting the pink aisle” with a toy that would introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age’. And disrupted she has. By combining reading material in the form of a story book following the tales of Goldie, the girl inventor, who goes on adventures and solves problems by building simple machines, girls use the toy to build the same inventions as their protagonist, developing spacial skills and enhancing their problem solving abilities.
With the number of girls in engineering staggeringly low in the US, and with only 13% of people working in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths in the UK being women (2012), the availability of this toy can only be a good thing! We only hope it catches on in the UK.
For their charming advertising campaign, watch the video below and visit the GoldieBlox website!
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