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Sexism row over 'Engineering Barbie'

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
''Experts said that despite 'Engineering Barbie' encouraging girls to build things, it reinforced unhelpful stereotypes'' CREDIT: THAMES AND KOSMOS

''A sexism row has erupted over a new Barbie doll which encourages girls to become engineers by building washing machines and racks for their shoes and jewellery.'' - The Telegraph

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.  Do you agree that it reinforces unhelpful stereotypes?  I should imagine that it would spark a similar argument to that of the pink Lego and only allowing girls to build things like kitchens and princess castles.


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    Grace Munday:

    I still maintain that engineering organisations such as the IET need to get out there and tell kids what jobs are available in engineering without highlighting all these issues, after all highlighting that there arent many women is hardly going to encourage girls! I think we should be promoting engineering as a wonderfull, creative job where team work and the ability to innovate and come up with solutions and work well in a team are important and where you get an opportunity to make a real difference. If kids and parents care given the information then they can make their own decisions about what they want to do. But in my experience the schools dont know about engineering or dont promote it as a job.

     




    I've done practice interviews in schools, typically 14-15 year olds in the first year of GCSEs.  Usually they will have been given a list of job descriptions and chosen on to fill in an application form against.  The nearest I've seen to an engineering job was car mechanic, the only other I've seen was construction worker (which when you read the job description was a general labouror; no mention of brick laying, roofing, plastering etc.).  I've raised this with the schools and even provided one with example job decriptions that were sanitised entry level IT jobs (includign trainee and apprentice roles) at the company I worked for.  In my experience they aren't interested.  Perhaps if the IET, with their percveived authority, were to publish sample job descriptions fitted to school leavers, college leavers and graduates (including trainee and apprentice roles) the schools might take an interest?


     

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  • 0

    Grace Munday:

    I still maintain that engineering organisations such as the IET need to get out there and tell kids what jobs are available in engineering without highlighting all these issues, after all highlighting that there arent many women is hardly going to encourage girls! I think we should be promoting engineering as a wonderfull, creative job where team work and the ability to innovate and come up with solutions and work well in a team are important and where you get an opportunity to make a real difference. If kids and parents care given the information then they can make their own decisions about what they want to do. But in my experience the schools dont know about engineering or dont promote it as a job.

     




    I've done practice interviews in schools, typically 14-15 year olds in the first year of GCSEs.  Usually they will have been given a list of job descriptions and chosen on to fill in an application form against.  The nearest I've seen to an engineering job was car mechanic, the only other I've seen was construction worker (which when you read the job description was a general labouror; no mention of brick laying, roofing, plastering etc.).  I've raised this with the schools and even provided one with example job decriptions that were sanitised entry level IT jobs (includign trainee and apprentice roles) at the company I worked for.  In my experience they aren't interested.  Perhaps if the IET, with their percveived authority, were to publish sample job descriptions fitted to school leavers, college leavers and graduates (including trainee and apprentice roles) the schools might take an interest?


     

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