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Lego Friends, marketed specifically to girls,
featuring a pastel-themed palette and family
-friendly scenarios such as the home, beauty
parlor and stable, has had spectacular
success. Despite skepticism and some
outright opposition, sales surpassed all
expectations. Michael McNally, Lego’s U.S.
spokesman says, “Our data show that we
tripled the number of girls who are building
with Lego bricks in the U.S. market since the
launch of Friends, and we’ve significantly
shifted the gender split among Lego users.”

Debbie Sterling is the founder and CEO of
GoldieBlox – a toy designed to “introduce
girls to the joys of engineering at a young age.”
Frustrated by the lack of females in engineering,
she invented Goldie Blox - a story book and
construction kit targeting girls between five and
nine years old, in which the blonde heroine
Goldie, meets a series of engineering
challenges – assisted by her trusty friends
Nacho the dog, Benjamin Cranklin, “a cat with
an attitude”, Katinka the dolphin ballerina, Phil
the sloth and Flavio the Brazilian bear. Goldie
Blox challenges girls to build working
machines using belts, cranks, pulleys, wheels, and axles. Sterling’s hope is that, “by
designing a construction toy from the female perspective, we aim to disrupt the pink aisle
and inspire the future generation of female engineers.”

The Roominate toy line was designed by two engineers from Stanford University with the
goal of getting more girls interested in engineering. Roominate consists of “a kit of wooden
building pieces and circuit components with which a child can use her creativity to design,
build, wire, and decorate her own unique interactive room.” Roominate allows young girls
to have fun with STEM, while building STEM-thinking, hands-on skills and confidence.

Some view these progressive, girl-friendly toys with a certain level of skepticism; some
with outright disdain, believing that all these attempts at banishing gender stereotypes
are only reinforcing them by feminizing boys’ toys and presenting those same toys in
pinks and purples and adding ribbons and cutesy blonde dolls (think Architect Barbie!).
The bottom line is – anything that raises awareness and gets us all thinking about the
STEM careers that exist, is a good thing – a step in the right direction.

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