GoldieBlox is a company that designs and produces toys to help encourage girls towards career paths in engineering.  The company was founded by Debbie Sterling (who holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering/Product Design from Stanford University) in order to address and help to remedy the issue of gender inequality in engineering.  Not only is this company helping to build a brighter future, by opening up new doors to new people, but the story of GoldieBlox is a magnificent illustration of what engineering should look like; that is, Sterling identified a problem and came up with a solution, and a very successful one at that.

Sterling identified the issue as follows: there is a major gender gap in the STEM fields, most particularly in the engineering fields.  I, as well as the other members of EAF, can personally attest to the existence of this gender gap, as over my 5.5 year undergraduate career, I was made all too aware of the lack of gender diversity in my classes.  This issue is magnified in mechanical engineering, which in my experience shows far lower numbers of females than other fields of engineering do.  In my average mechanical engineering class throughout my undergraduate career, there were on average 1-2 female students out of a class of 30-35 students on average; furthermore, while some classes had as many as 4 females, many classes did not have any at all.  Unfortunately, in a historic/traditional sense, female students have not been exposed to the STEM subjects to the extent that male students have, paving the way for this staggering gap in gender equality within the STEM fields, as shown below.

In order to remedy this issue, Sterling has created a line of toys specifically targeted towards girls at younger age levels that aim to inspire interest in engineering.  She essentially has made the female equivalent of the builder sets and simple machine toys that many boys enjoyed growing up, but that many girls were kept isolated from due to what society has seen as traditional gender roles.  To this end, Sterling’s company (GoldieBlox) is rapidly making great strides in its journey to change the landscape in the world of engineering to empower a group of traditionally underrepresented people (in this case, females) to introduce them to more opportunities.  It is because of companies such as GoldieBlox that the world of engineering is able to continually advance and evolve, as a direct result of the new talent brought to these fields through the doors GoldieBlox is opening for new people.

I highly recommend that you check out the GoldieBlox website to learn more about this company and perhaps even purchase some of their cool products!