Wonderful Women Of The World
Posted by Michelle Moquin on September 7th, 2013
Good morning!
Another fave from Think Progress:
Shattering The Plastic Ceiling: Why It Matters That LEGO Just Created A Female Scientist
BY ANNIE-ROSE STRASSER ON SEPTEMBER 6, 2013 AT 2:58 PM
CREDIT: Today.comMeet Professor C. Bodin: She looks authoritative, in her white lab coat, wielding beakers full of dangerous-looking yellow and blue liquid. She’s definitely smart — according to her bio, she won the “coveted Nobrick Prize for her discovery of the theoretical System/DUPLO® Interface.” But Bodin is far from intimidating; she’s only an inch and a half tall.
Bodin is the newest minifigure from LEGO. She and others were rolled out this week as part of the company’s Minifigure Series 11. And while that may seem like an unremarkable event — she’s just a fictional figure meant for kids, after all — the creation of Bodin is actually something to be celebrated: She is the first-ever female scientist in the company’s 81-year history.
LEGO hasn’t always been a model of gender equality. The company has often marketed itself exclusively to boys. It also got itself into hot waterearlier this year after one father discovered a sticker of a male LEGO construction worker sticker with a speech bubble reading “Hey Babe!”
Last year, the company pledged to “Deliver Meaningful Play Experiences to Girls Worldwide.” The new figurines, however, turned out to be different than standard legos. And, as Maia Weinstock at Scientific American points out, they were also pink and frilly.
With Professor Bodin, though, it seems LEGO is finally living up to that promise.
But why should it matter if there’s one female scientist in LEGO’s collection? Well, Weinstock reports, “the ratio of all-time minifigure models is roughly 4:1 in favor of males. And the female characters LEGO has produced are often laden with stereotypes. A quick glance at some typical female minifig torsos suggests that girls/women are predominantly into pink, hearts, and excess skin.”
The toy world’s ratios and stereotypes are played out in real life: Women only make up 24 percent (PDF) of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs, despite making up nearly half of the workforce.
And it matters that girls see figurines who represent what they might become. There’s evidence that reinforcing gender stereotypes can be formative to how a little girl or boy views him or herself. Numerousstudies show that girls lack confidence in mathematics if their parents enforce gender stereotypes around the subject.
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Readers: Well it’s about time. Yay to Professor Bodin for shattering the plastic ceiling! I just heard of “STEM” for the first time tonight when I read a write on the importance of Silicon Valley taking the lead in attracting women in tech. And then I stumbled upon this write googling something completely different. Hmmm…I think it was a sign that I needed to post this…so I did.
Let’s HOPE that Bodin will help inspire young girls to take an interest in these kinds of fields. We certainly could use more intelligent girls taking the opportunity to do some great things in these areas. Yes…I’m really looking forward to seeing the females of this planet take the lead. How about you?
Blog me.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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September 7th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Yes! And kudos to the dad who reported the ‘hey babe’ bubble, too, there’s a male feminist example fr you. Perfect.
Mm blog BABES, when anyone starts sabotaging or projecting their new emotional feelings about your changes in weight and attitude/life outlook (they do often go hand in hand with built up confidence) though those are your new feelings also. Please understand that confident can step over into cocky quickly unless you’re very conscious in your thoughts and actions and usage of words (think: new ex-smoker challenging every other smoker when that was them yesterday) so mind your own free floating emotions. Now, about the ‘others’ in your life…bc your basically rearranging the ecology of the household (when someone gets healthy, gets suck, changes jobs, etc…it shifts things and sometimes the shift is permanent and sometimes it’s temporary) so for the moment sticking to your program is like gauntlet so if you really want change in weight/lifestyle it comes with this shift and it’s best to understand that upfront. Be kind to yourself and them, though go ‘broken record’ with your responses if challenged, say ‘I hope you understand that this I am doing for myself and we will work together to make the currents shifts palatable fr you’ or whatever verbiage works for you…sticking to your own life ‘guns’ ain’t always easy but worth it, yes. They’ll adjust…
That’s it fr now, keep up the workouts and ill be back before Monday w some exercises, trying to calculate my own workouts this weekend bc I have achieved the back I was craving, now it’s about maintenance and getting the biceps and belly there ; )
Luv, Zen Lill
September 12th, 2013 at 8:09 am
Zen Lill, you always manage to discover the gems of an article.