I think that the idea of pinkwashing toys is really a simple solution to another problem altogether.
I was in the same class in high school as the lead flight coordinator for the Mars Rover program. How come he is a PhD in engineering and I work in engineering but never even considered that as a degree at the same age he had his future all mapped out?
Even though I had a lot of friends in college who were engineering majors, I never once thought, “Hey, that could be for me,” even though I was at the time spending 40 hours a week at the television production studio learning how to cable up a/v equipment just for fun.
I didn’t know a single engineer when I was in high school or as a kid. I was involved in computer programming, yes, but I already knew that I didn’t want to do that as a career or a major.
To me, yeah, toys are good but there is a lot of other issues involved with getting girls involved in engineering. A lot of men in this field are either a) so nerdy they can’t speak to women or b) so family oriented that they kind of divide genders into girls and boys really strongly. I like the people but since they can afford to have wives stay home with kids, they tend to see women as moms and daughters, not co-workers. We really need the male engineers to reach out to their daughters and push them into the field the way they do their sons, IMHO.
