
How to Get Girls into Engineering? Let Them Build Toys - sonabinu
http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-to-get-girls-into-engineering-let-them-build-their-own-toys-1408912053?mod=LS1
======
grimtrigger
There's a whole industry that tries to convince parents that they can change
their child's future by supplying them with the right toys - but there's
little to suggest these toys actually matter [1].

I'm glad these two are trying to get more kids into engineering (female or
not), but their thesis is pretty hollow on a few fronts. Most importantly that
engineering toys lead to engineering kids. But also that engineering toys that
currently exist (lego/knex) have some kind of implicit feature that keeps them
out of the hands of girls.

[1]
[http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,0...](http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1650352,00.html)

~~~
watwut
Fully agree. It is more about attitude of adults who often tend to assume the
girl has not build stuff potential and treat them as such.

Just stop marking every single toy as boy or girl one. Most boyish engineering
toys are actually perfect for both sexes, as long as you stop telling girls
"it is boys toy, you are not supposed to play with it, see the coloring on the
box?". And I heard the last one in toy store and it was idiotic on multiple
levels. (Why should anything non-pink be for boys only, really?).

Girls do not need special toys build for them. We need to stop teaching kids
that every damn toy is either inherently boyish or girlish.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I agree completely. I liked legos as a kid, and cars and stuff, but i was
keenly aware that these were 'boy toys'. Changes in advertising and
presentation are needed: 'girlified' legos always turned me off (really, the
boys are manning spaceships and the girls are shopping?), but I'd have liked a
mix of male and female characters doing fun stuff. Neutral.

It gets more intense than just the color changes in toys: Last Christmas gifts
I bought my niece and nephew, there were a lot of toys in various price ranges
for my nephew, all of which were actual playable toys and selection of types
of toys. For my niece, however, mostly dolls, and many of the cheaper toys
weren't useful by themselves - they were all accessories for the dolls.

------
Padding
Our society has a weird and twisted notion of freedom. Have everyone do
whatever they feel like (within the legal limits, of course) .. and no one
thinks twice about it. Millions of people dying? Yeah, sure, ressources are
scarce - not our fault the universe is so cruel. Right?

But then as soon as someone somewhere manages to twist reality in a way such
that it actually impacts our emotions, e.g. by claiming that it could be _your
child_ to suffer this inequality in life, all of a sudden there's an outcry
out for regulation to fix that one specific issue with rationality-be-damned
and ends-justify-the-means methods.

How about instead we take a step back and look for structural causes for these
issues. Chances are that if our society allowed for the tech-industry to be
unjstifyably hostile towards women, it also allowed for some generic industry
X to be unjstifyably hostile towards some generic group Y of the population.
Chances are that if our society allowed for marketing to negatively impact the
opportunities that women have later in life, it also allowed for some generic
business practice X to negatively impact the opportunities that generic group
Y of the population will have later in life.

Given this, what kind of madman would assume that providing an ends-justify-
the-means hotfix that solves (or at least tries to solve) the issue for some y
(in Y) is the right approach to this?

Or to put it more bluntly, what makes women so much more worthy of our
attention compared to all those other groups of people that are struggling in
life? Why do they get to fasttrack their issues, rather than have to wait for
a structural solution that benefits everyone, just like everybody else too?

~~~
k-mcgrady
I think you're right. We need to start looking at the problem from further
away. Fixing one specific lack of diversity doesn't help solve the others.

Take for example Google. In their diversity report[1] it shows that only 17%
of employees in tech related jobs are women. That's something people have
talked about for a while and shows a lack of women in tech. We seem to be
ignoring the fact however that 94% of Google's tech employees are white or
Asian. Only 2% are hispanic and only 1% are black. Why are we ignoring this?
As you say we need to step back and look at the bigger problem - lack of
diversity - instead of focusing on one specific area (women).

[1] [http://www.google.co.uk/diversity/at-
google.html#tab=tech](http://www.google.co.uk/diversity/at-
google.html#tab=tech)

~~~
rimantas
And how many are bald? How many have blue eyes? My point is: how come we are
so sure that diversity at some place X should exactly match demographics?

~~~
mcphage
> how come we are so sure that diversity at some place X should exactly match
> demographics

Assuming that those demographics are independent of talent or skill, why
wouldn't diversity of a population match the diversity of the population as a
whole? At least for a large enough company, of which Google (with over 50,000
employees, although not all are in the US) certainly qualifies.

Or to put it another way: if you took 50,000 people at random from the US,
then their demographics would closely mirror the demographics of the US as a
whole. So if the diversity at a company is very different from that, then
something is happening to cause that difference.

------
andrewfong
Is it just me, or does it seem weird that we need a gender-specific way to get
kids interested in engineering? Building toys seems like a way to get kids
interested in engineering in general.

~~~
deciplex
It can seem weird until you realize it's to counteract gender biases
everywhere else. We need gender-specific ways to get more girls into
engineering, to fight against all the other bullshit that's keeping them out.
When/if that bullshit is gone, we won't need the gender-specific stuff
anymore.

~~~
rimantas
How do you know that we "need"? Maybe we just want, but don't need? Did you
ask the girls first? Or did you assume, that we need to get them to 50%? Are
you sure you are not fighting bullshit case with bullshit means?

~~~
deciplex
Actually I do assume parity is the ideal, unless a strong argument is
presented otherwise. Do you have one?

------
empressplay
The problem here is really media portrayal of who should be playing with what.
If Lego / KNex / etc. were actually marketed toward girls as much as boys,
more girls would eventually try / use them. That they aren't is due to simple
top-down cultural re-inforcement of sexist stereotypes.

I suspect that sadly it will ultimately take legislation to regulate media (in
particular the advertising industry) to solve the problem, by mandating that
gender-specific marketing of a product toward children is illegal, period.
(And yes, I mean the toy dump trucks and dolls as much as the technical toys.)

It sounds heavy-handed, but there doesn't seem to be much else that will fix
it. Certainly not "niche" small-scale products that are essentially mice
attempting to balance against the toy company "elephant". The elephant likes
the status quo and will only change if you hit it with a cattle-prod.

~~~
Afforess
Yes... Legislating gender-neutral advertising for children's toy is clearly
the solution for the tech sector gender gap.

Give me a break. That is a violation of the first amendment.

I don't "get" why anyone cares about the "gender gap". Who cares? If there is
overt sexism, obviously that is wrong, but there is no law (nor should their
be) that every field of employment should be an even 50/50 gender split. Men
and women _are_ different, and differences should be embraced. We shouldn't be
legislating society to fit a utopian ideal of exact gender equality.
Biologically human genders _aren 't_ equal.

------
starky
I would be interested in seeing if there was any difference in rates of girls
that played with Lego growing up and whether or not they went into
engineering.

I remember sitting with my class of 120 on the first day with my Mechanical
Engineering class. One of the profs asked us how many of us played with Lego
growing up. I believe that every single hand in the room was raised to that
question (about 20% of those were women).

My suspicion would be that Lego is pretty much universal and that very few
children grow up not playing with it at least occasionally.

~~~
watwut
Isnt lego more art then engineering through? I liked engineering toys as a
child (mostly merkur), but found lego less interesting. It is more about
building something good looking then about solving problems and being
technical.

~~~
kragniz
It depends on what you're building. If you're playing around with minifigs and
the basic bricks, then yes, mostly. However, Lego Technic is much more about
solving problems, particularity the Mindstorms [0] range. I had the RCX when I
was around 9, and programming it and making things that move really started an
interest in robotics. I've helped out at some local FIRST Lego League events
[1], which are very engineering-focused.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms),
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms_EV3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms_EV3)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Lego_League](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Lego_League)

~~~
watwut
Point taken, I did not had lego technic. I'm not sure about today, but it was
more expensive then just buying bricks and over what my parents were willing
to pay for a toy. Although lego Technic looked to me like a toy anyway while
merkur looked to me like a "real thing". There is something special on using
real screwdriver and screws :).

Lego Mindstorms would be in the same price category today, I would say. I
suspect most parents would have to be sure the kid will play with it to excuse
the price, it is not something you buy just to try whether the kid like it or
not.

------
owenversteeg
I think much better than one specific silver bullet toy, give kids (or girls
specifically) batteries, sensors, LEDs, motors, and a good toolset and see
what they build. Not only is it a hell of a lot cheaper (a drillpress you use
for several years costs as much as a nice lego set you use for a few months)
but it also gives them directly applicable life skills.

[Warning: the Surgeon General indicates that anecdotal evidence may be
detrimental to your mental health] Of a few little girls I know, this has
worked well.

~~~
k-mcgrady
The only problem with that is that children would have to be very closely
supervised working with those things. Most parents give children toys to
occupy them while they do something else.

~~~
watwut
Depends on the age of the kid and price of the item. By the time they are able
to take advantage of sensors, LEDs, motors and resistor, they are fully able
not to harm themselves with it. So it boils down to how expensive stuff you
buy.

Even younger kids do not have to be very closely supervised when working with
real tools if you remove dangerous ones. Three years old can safely play with
few screwdrivers, pliers and cardboard box without close supervision.

~~~
k-mcgrady
True. It was mainly the op's suggestion of a drill press that lead to my
supervision comment.

------
eng_monkey
Those girls are going to be fairly disappointed years later when they start
studying their engineering degree. By then, they will quickly discover how
little engineering has to do with assembling stuff. And, instead, how it is
mostly about developing (often novel) technology through the formal
application of basic sciences, particularly physics, chemistry, and
mathematics.

------
prestadige
Just have lots of different toys available to begin with and get more of
whichever are played with the most. Don't restrict the use of computers.

Don't worry about outcomes or what people _should_ be playing with. Actually
"should be playing with" is almost a contradiction in terms since _play_ is
undirected.

------
ivanca
I wonder how to get girls into coal mining? If you think I'm "trolling" you
would first have to explain on what logic does *equality" means to balance the
gender gap only in the top grossing jobs.

~~~
theworst
You bring up an interesting point -- the gender equality efforts really only
focus on jobs deemed glamorous or noble.

There aren't many campaigns to get more men into Nursing, AFAIK, although it
is a very important profession with an extremely heavy gender skew.

~~~
paulv
[http://aamn.org/](http://aamn.org/). 2nd result if you google "men nursing".

~~~
theworst
Yes, they exist. But compare the dollars and hours poured into encouraging
females to go into male-driven fields. I have noticed a relative paucity of
anything purporting to be focused on men.

I understand that men have the advantage in general, but in specific fields,
this isn't the case. My (male) cousin is in nursing school right now; >80% of
the class is female, and he regularly gets teased about being a male nurse.

Heck, the movie "Meet the Fokkers" had that as one of the central jokes: Ben
Stiller is a male nurse! Haha, isn't that funny?

------
jdimov
Girls.. toys.. sounds good to me!

~~~
sonabinu
I checked out the website at
[http://www.roominatetoy.com/](http://www.roominatetoy.com/) and it looks
promising

