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Barbie Launches STEM Robotics Engineer Doll

For nearly 60 years, Barbie has been telling girls they can be anything they want to be, thanks to the 200-plus careers held by the most famous doll in the world. Now, Mattel is going a step further by not just releasing a new career for the doll, but actually helping young girls take the necessary steps to one day achieving that career. Welcome Robotics Engineer Barbie, which launches today, and is designed to interest girls in a particular STEM job that many might find unfamiliar to them.

It’s not the first time that Barbie has explored a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—we’re all familiar with astronaut Barbie—but it is the first time the doll will come with a robot that you can bend and reconfigure (as well as a laptop) as her main accessory. If you’re unfamiliar with the work that a robotics engineer does though, you’re not alone. That’s why Barbie has partnered with Tynker—the gaming platform that helps kids learn to code—to help young girls understand the careers available to them as robotics engineers (like designing robots to explore areas where humans cannot, such as the ocean or planets).

“We wanted to shine a light on this underrepresented career and field for women,” Lisa McKnight, Barbie’s General Manager and Senior Vice President, tells Glamour. “Only 24% of STEM jobs are held by women, and we felt that Barbie, with the platform that we have, was the perfect opportunity to do more in this space.”

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The doll will come in four ethnicities—African American, Asian, Caucasian and Latina—so “as many girls as possible see themselves [in this doll],” McKnight says. Mattel and Barbie are also partnering with Black Girls CODE robotics workshops to reach young girls interested in developing skills in the field. In addition, Barbie is collaborating with information science professor and coder, Casey Fiesler, PhD, to release Code Camp for Barbie and Friends, an e-book available on Amazon that will introduce the concepts of code.

But being that this is Barbie, fashion is an important aspect to the doll’s identity, and one that McKnight is thrilled to debut. “The details of her fashion are all about authenticity,” she says. For example: Barbie’s hair is in a ponytail so she doesn’t have any distractions, and she’s wearing sneakers since the job requires her to be on her feet, constantly working constantly with equipment. “We wanted to make sure her fashion was reflective of what someone in the profession would really be wearing,” McKnight says. In fact, the Barbie design team worked with a female professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to ensure the doll’s presentation was accurate.

“All [Barbie’s] careers are about inspiring the limitless potential in every girl,” McKnight says. “We have a platform that can be leveraged to do good, and we want to use our voice to have a call to action to inspire the next generation of girls.”

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Stem From Dance Is Using Dance to Turn Teen Girls Into Coders

Sadly, you’ll never be Beyoncé. But do you know what you can be? A badass woman in tech who can code better than the boys.

That’s the message of STEM From Dance, a nonprofit using the power of dance to get girls—particularly teen girls of color from disadvantaged communities—into coding. It was founded in 2011 years ago by Yamilée Toussaint, who started dancing when she was 4.

“Dance gave me a space to see that I was good at something, and a space to express myself and challenge myself,” she told Glamour. After high school, she studied mechanical engineering at MIT, where she came face to face with the gender gap in STEM: In her first mechanical engineering class she was one of two black women in a lecture hall of 200 students. After graduation she decided she wanted to do something about that.

“I was like, ‘There’s got to be some way to take what you can gain from dance—the fun, the community, the form of expression—and translate it into the STEM world,” she says. “Because the population that we work with, that’s exactly what what they need to feel like STEM can be meaningful.”

There’s research to back her up: A recent study found that students majoring in STEM subjects in college reported that being involved in dance helped them with creative problem solving and collaboration.

PHOTO: Damon Plant

In STEM From Dance programs, a dance instructor works with students to choreograph a dance performance that incorporates technology in some way. Sometimes the girls code computer graphics that complement the dance that are projected onto the stage; other times, the students wear costumes with programmable lights on them, which flash or change color depending on the wearer’s movement. Instructors also use movement to teach math and science concepts.

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Admittedly, most of the students come to STEM From Dance for the dancing, not the STEM. But Toussaint isn’t ashamed of using modern dance—which most teen girls are already into—as a hook for coding. And most of the time, the girls bite: by the end of the program, many of the girls realize that coding is just as fun and cool as the dance moves they’re learning. Several students have even said that the program made them regret not getting involved in coding classes at their school sooner.

And that’s kind of the point: Teen girls of color can picture themselves dancing to Rhianna or Beyoncé, because Rhianna and Beyoncé look like they do. But picture themselves as coders? Not so much. STEM From Dance lets girls imagine themselves in that role, and with its supportive, Bey-loving, girl-centric environment, they learn that they have what it takes to code better than boys do.

“We’re using the confidence that you can gain through dance and translating it to the STEM side,” Toussaint says.

So far, the program has been implemented in 10 schools throughout the New York City area, and touched around 400 students. It remains to be seen how many of them will be the next Steve Jobs.

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