Thus far we have discussed my internship and a few of the ways that we can see women in the engineering field during their adulthood but we have not yet discussed the influence of the elementary atmosphere on women that ultimately pursue engineering. Not only is there a vast number of stereotypes within engineering but toys that develop engineering skills are simply not geared towards females.
A great example is LEGO, a company that we probably all know. What you might not have noticed about legos is that they typically have a male oriented theme. They are labeled as "boy toys" and are normally found in the corresponding aisle at the store while the girl's toy aisle is filled with pink and purple colors with lots of Barbies, cooking toys, and baby dolls. This signals to young children that girls are supposed to cook and take care of babies while the boys build things. The traditional gender roles of society are ingrained into the toys available to young children. Furthermore, when students go to decide which activities they would like to do or which classes they want to take, the ideas taught to them during childhood make it such that females take cooking classes while the men are in the wood shop or they're building cars.
One female, Debbie Sterling, recognized this after attending her first few engineering classes at the university level. Not only does this change how girls think they are supposed to act in society but it limits what they learn. It has been shown that females at the university level typically struggle with spacial reasoning while men don't. But if you take it back to childhood you can clearly see that men understand this better because they have practiced how to take the 2-D image in the lego instruction manual and build the actual 3-D product. Girls didn't normally play with legos so they weren't able to practice this concept. However, Debbie Sterling did a study while developing GoldieBlox that determined that even when young girls were given traditional legos they weren't interested. After many studies, she also found that merely changing the colors of legos to pink or purple to intrigue the girls wasn't enough. She found that the young girls wanted to follow a story. Thus, she took the lego type blox that she developed and wrote a book where a female engineer is building objects that the girls can actually follow along and build with her. Not only were girls then developing their spatial reasoning but they were using their imagination. The story of how Debbie Sterling broke through the barrier in the toy industry is truly inspiring. I encourage you all to watch her TedTalk here. As you can see through this new product, there are people who want to encourage the next generation of female engineers.
So, it is clear that the struggle for women pursuing STEM fields doesn't just start when the enter high school but that it is a life-long battle. I hope that through this project you will start to see how deep this issue goes but that you also acknowledge the progress that is being made due to shifting barriers in today's society!
Hi Liz, this is a great post on the integration of traditional gender roles in engineering. You bring into question something I have always wondered about. Do you believe that women might be scoring differently than men on standardized tests for similar reasons? For instance, because women are placed in a stereotypical environment that focuses on more “girly” things rather than toys like legos that build spatial reasoning, they score less on the math and science portions?
ReplyDeleteHey Shambhavi! I totally agree that the more "girly" toys are hindering female performance on the exams. When girls have the opportunity to study what they want they man steer away from the male topics such as math and science because they fear judgment. I really think thay toys and chilhood games are influincing childrens decisions when it comes to school
DeleteHey Shambhavi! I totally agree that the more "girly" toys are hindering female performance on the exams. When girls have the opportunity to study what they want they man steer away from the male topics such as math and science because they fear judgment. I really think thay toys and chilhood games are influincing childrens decisions when it comes to school
DeleteThat is some excellent research. It gets down to the heart of the problem with some great results. Having raised two girls, there were not many things that we could not turn into gender neutral but I wish I knew about the story angle. So there are toys now to help develop the youngest of girls, but what happens to those who are passed the age of these toys that were brought up in a more traditional setting. Is there anything out there for them?
ReplyDeleteHi again Mr. Weber! Yet another fantastic question, in one of my posts in the near future I plan on discussing the resources and programs that universities all over the world are developing to help girls who are all ready past the "toy-age" to adjust into the engineering field. However, I find it important to bring up that even females who are already in the field of engineering and have been for a while are gaining notice within the work-place. As the issue of women in engineering becomes more and more of a public issue, those females who went against the grain and, despite the adversity, pursued engineering are now being recognized as role-models for young females everywhere.
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