Mission 4

Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Careers

Did you know that according to the Department of Commerce's Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation (August 2011) women represent only 24% of the STEM workforce?

This infographic was originally published at Techschool.com. 
Read more at http://women2.com/why-stem-careers-are-awesome-for-women-infographic/#JZjosddPSZ1px1V6.99

Task 6: GoldieBlox and Busting Myths

1. Read this:

Toy company encourages girls to be engineers with viral Beastie Boys remake

GoldieBlox's newest YouTube video proves girls are fans of building toys, too. Assembling a Rube Goldberg machine, three young inventors turn the Beastie Boys' hit song 'Girls' into an anthem for ditching girly dolls and pink toys. The company is in the running to air a Super Bowl ad.

BY RHEANA MURRAY / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013, 1:24 PM

Forget tea sets and ponies. These girls want hardhats and tool kits.

A new toy company that encourages girls to be builders, not princesses, struck a chord with its latest YouTube ad, starring three budding engineers chanting their own lyrics to the Beastie Boys’ hit song, “Girls.”

 “You like to buy us pink toys, and everything else is for boys,” the girls sing in GoldieBlox’s viral video, while setting up a Rube Goldberg machine.

“It’s time to change, we deserve to see a range. Because all our toys look the same and we would like to use our brains.”

The ad has more than 3.5 million views.

“The response has been absolutely overwhelming,” GoldieBlox CEO Debbie Sterling told the Daily News. “Parents are showing it to their kids and now their kids want a GoldieBlox.”

Disappointed by a lack of building toys geared toward girls, Sterling launched the brand through Kickstarter a year ago.

“I studied engineering at Stanford, and there were very few women,” she said. “I started looking into the problem, and saw that girls start losing interest in science and engineering as young as age 8. I wanted to change that.

”GoldieBlox’s building kits, designed for girls ages 4-9, focus on stories — designing a spinning machine to help Goldie’s dog chase its tail, for example, or a parade float to cheer up a friend who lost the princess pageant.

“Girls have very strong verbal skills and like characters and stories,” Sterling said. “So GoldieBlox combines storytelling and building.”

The toys, available online and at Toys ‘R’ Us, are what Sterling wishes she had when she was a kid, according to the 30-year-old engineer.

GoldieBlox, whose motto is “disrupting the pink aisle,” is in the running to air an ad during the Super Bowl. Sterling recently learned the Oakland, Calif.-based company is one of four finalists out of 15,000 companies considered for the slot, part of Intuit’s Small Business Big Game Contest.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/toy-company-urges-girls-engineers-article-1.1523559?print

2. Watch the video here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/19/goldieblox_commercial_rewrites_the_beastie_boys_urges_young_girls_to_pursue.html

3. Then read this: 
http://www.livescience.com/7349-top-5-myths-girls-math-science.html

4. Post a comment on this blog post with your reactions to the articles and the videos. Why do you think there are less women in the fields of science, math, engineering and technology? What can be done to encourage girls to become more interested in, and possibly explore careers in these fields?