The Library Of Congress via Flickr
Before they're even born girls are surrounded by pink.Blame it on baby showers and overly eager friends who want to dress the newborn up like the dolls she'll probably start playing with soon.
A stereotype that comes along with all that pink is that girls are meant to be beautiful makeup loving and princess admiring while boys wrestle and play in mud. Toy commercials feed the stereotype with ponies and glitter for girls and G.I. Joes and Transformers for boys. When kids grow up those toy induced stereotype sometimes morph into different career paths.
Debbie Sterling a Stanford educated engineer and the CEO of Goldieblox wants to change that.
She says only 11% of all engineers are women. While it's well known there are fewer women in tech a lot of programs aiming to fix the problem focus on college or high school students. Sterling believes the issue begins much earlier.
Broadening children's interests doesn't mean girls shouldn't aspire to be feminine. GoldieBlox which makes interactive games uses a cute blonde as its logo. But her blonde isn't a Barbie who sits around and waits for Ken. It's a blonde who is building cool things.
Sterling's realization isn't ground beaking but her video about it has hit a nerve. It was posted two days ago on YouTube and currently has more than 3 million views. Its mission is to make the pink shelf in toy stores less pink.
Here are the lyrics
Girls. You think you know what we want girls.Pink and pretty it's girls.Just like the 50's it's girls.
You like to buy us pink toysand everything else is for boysand you can always get us dollsand we'll grow up like them... false.
It's time to change.We deserve to see a range.'Cause all our toys look just the sameand we would like to use our brains.
We are all more than princess maids.
Girls to build the spaceship Girls to code the new app Girls to grow up knowingthey can engineer that.
Girls. That's all we really need is Girls. To bring us up to speed it's Girls. Our opportunity is Girls. Don't underestimate Girls.
Here's the video.
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