Women on the Move: Empowering Girls Through Playtime

As you all know collegiettes are striving to succeed in academics, service and beyond. Read about Debbie Sterling Lewis, a Standford graduate with a degree in engineering, who invented a line of toys geared towards young girls to teach them basic principles of physics and mechanics in a fun, accessible way. Lewis’s creation, “GoldiBlox,” is a book series paired with a construction set; girls must solve problems illustrated in the book by constructing simple machines.
 

Why should young girls play with GoldiBlox? Because girls need to develop spatial skills just as much as boys do. It is troubling to see that stores market popular building toys like Legos and K’Nex almost exclusively to boys, and are less appealing to female consumers. When girls play with Goldiblox instead of a Barbie, they ignite an intellectual interest in math and science. This gives hope that the rising generation of women will be more passionate about engineering and will make traditionally male-dominated career fields more equal in gender proportions.
Of course, it is no secret that the current numbers of American women who pursue careers in engineering are severely behind that of men; a whopping 89% of engineers are male. Lewis was troubled by this statistic, which is why she set out to do something about it. Young children, male and female, both exhibit seeking behavior, which is the basic biological emotion of curiosity, exploration, and discovery. This behavior is universal. So why shouldn’t girls have access to exploring the wonders of the mechanical world just as much as their male counterparts? That is where Goldiblox comes in, by teaching young girls not to be intimidated by math and science. 
 

Even though there is no guarantee that Goldiblox will make every girl an aspiring engineer, Lewis sets an example for companies by showing that there is a demand for constructive toys that are attractive to female consumers. In a nation that is literally built by an almost all-male workforce, America would benefit from a female perspective on the engineering teams. GoldiBlox is a big step towards empowering young women from a young age and giving them confidence to pursue their dreams regardless of gender stereotypes that degrade women’s quantitative skills.

*All images are screenshots from Goldiebox.com