Working with the Society
of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering, Mattel's
Barbie will become a fashion icon in the high-tech industry as a
computer engineer in 2010. The big question is whether this doll will
encourage more young girls to explore math and science as they enter
middle school and high school ("Revenge
of the Nerds: How Barbie Got Her Geek On," page one, April 9).
I have a teenage daughter
who played with Barbie dolls for many years. She loved coordinating
fashions for each Barbie that she owned. I don't think she realized that
Barbie even had a career other than to wonder secretly why she couldn't
hold a job, having had 124 careers to date.
Even though Barbie is a
computer engineer this year, she is still a Barbie with a
disproportionate body type and plastic must-have "career" accessories.
In a time when young women need better self images, this Barbie still
doesn't convince me that Mattel is on the leading edge of engineering
images other than in its mass production and manufacturing efforts. I'll
just have to wait and see what the graduating engineers look like in 15
years.
Alexis Schroeder
Oakland, Calif.
You write that while
"girls the world over overwhelmingly cast their ballot for anchorwoman
Barbie," the adult, nerdist, feminists of the world "launched a viral
campaign" to hijack the vote and stuff the ballot box with their vision
of what every little girl should aspire to. That's not so much computer
engineering as social engineering. (I'm willing to bet that most of the
time spent on this vast effort was company or tax-supported government
time.)
So now, like so many
times in the past 30 years of feminist antics, little girls, who will be
the primary purchasers of Barbie, don't get what they want. Rather they
get a feminist vision of what they should want: a world where little
girls must find inspiration in bits and bytes but not in being what they
want, like an anchorwoman in high heels and smart business attire, not
that there's anything wrong with that.
I'd like to propose my
own unscientific theory about why there aren't more women in
engineering, and it has nothing to do with opportunity. Girls and women
easily have equal access to primary and secondary education in
mathematics and the sciences. Most women simply don't like engineering.
It's icky. It's dirty. It's sweaty. Why do you think they call it
"engine-eering"? Most women prefer "tidier" professions. Even women who
earn an engineering degree mostly end up in nicer allied fields or in
management, where they can distance themselves from the messy business
of "doing" engineering.
Steve Schupbach
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 