It is great but I am not surprised at the engineering toys for girls. Of course there is a mechanical engineer from Stanford behind it, who came up with the idea of inspiring girls from a very young age to get into engineering. Oh, did I mention that the CEO of GoldieBlox toys is a lady? Her name is Debbie Sterling.
When girls are submerged in pink and mauve shimmery things and their role model becomes Barbie or Princess Sophia, this "disrupting the pink aisle" video looks like a draft of fresh air. Take a look...
This reminds me of the innumerable afternoons I spent "experimenting" with muddy water, filtering them and then stirring water color into different glass cups and imagining them to be dangerous chemicals of my lab! Later, those changed to proper science projects with electric wires and batteries when I did electrolysis and copper coated a paper clip, made a nice pin-hole camera by sticking a magnifying glass to the pinhole and did experiments by overlapping colored lights. It is a pleasure to see principles of physics in action. Same about the mechano experiments where pulleys pull loads, electric fans move and motors rotate. Even creating simple circuits - bulbs in parallel and series connection and "see" how things work can make a big difference in someone's interest in science and technology.
Now that I have crossed all those stages and can spend my time working on cloud computing stuff, I understand how important it is to not stereotype science and technology as a boys' only thing. The best way is to start early with gender neutral toys, or rather not associating gender with toys. You go and get the one that interests you. That is the right thing to do. Then only we can increase the 11% women engineers to some respectable ratio.
When girls are submerged in pink and mauve shimmery things and their role model becomes Barbie or Princess Sophia, this "disrupting the pink aisle" video looks like a draft of fresh air. Take a look...
This reminds me of the innumerable afternoons I spent "experimenting" with muddy water, filtering them and then stirring water color into different glass cups and imagining them to be dangerous chemicals of my lab! Later, those changed to proper science projects with electric wires and batteries when I did electrolysis and copper coated a paper clip, made a nice pin-hole camera by sticking a magnifying glass to the pinhole and did experiments by overlapping colored lights. It is a pleasure to see principles of physics in action. Same about the mechano experiments where pulleys pull loads, electric fans move and motors rotate. Even creating simple circuits - bulbs in parallel and series connection and "see" how things work can make a big difference in someone's interest in science and technology.
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| I'm proud to belong to this class :) |
Now that I have crossed all those stages and can spend my time working on cloud computing stuff, I understand how important it is to not stereotype science and technology as a boys' only thing. The best way is to start early with gender neutral toys, or rather not associating gender with toys. You go and get the one that interests you. That is the right thing to do. Then only we can increase the 11% women engineers to some respectable ratio.
1 comment:
Actually as I have always seen you playing cricket or trying to fly kites and pouring over mechano etc., I never realized the differences people make between boys and girls.
Why should there be a distinction baffles me. It is very heartening that at last someone has lifted the curtains towards a new path.
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