Much has been made in recent years about the low percentage of women in the engineering industry, but comparatively little progress has been made. The question remains: How do we encourage a young girl’s interest in designing, problem-solving, experimenting, developing, and building? Because if we can do that with the current generation of imaginative, technologically-inclined youngsters, there could well be a marked increase in the number of women who choose careers from among the broad range of engineering disciplines.
This new advertisement from GoldieBlox, which has “developed a set of interactive books and games to ‘disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers’”, is a fantastic start!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFpe3Up9T_g&w=640&h=360]
Set to the tune of the Beastie Boys’ famously catchy Girls, we see the execution of a fabulous Rube Goldberg machine as a trio of excited would-be engineers uses their perpetually pink toys to play a new version of house.
There may be many answers to the question of gender disparity in the engineering industry, but this is definitely one of the more fun, optimistic ones. Well done, GoldieBlox! And just in time for Christmas.