HOW GENDERED TOYS LIMIT YOUNG GIRLS AMBITIONS

“Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls.
But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. 
The girls who played with them could only ever play at being mothers.”

When you go into the toy aisle at a store the options are staggeringly different between the toys for boys and girls. Boys are offered toy cars, construction sets, and miniature spaceships, while girls are often offered dolls that act as babies. While boys are told that they can be whatever they want to be, girls are told from a young age that their only goal in life should be to become a mother. This conditions women from an impressionable age to not strive for bigger career opportunities and this often causes women to be forced into domestic roles later on in life. 

“All of these women are Barbie, and Barbie is all of these women.
She might have started out as just a lady in a bathing suit, but she became so much more.
She has her own money, her own house, her own car, her own career.” 

When we stop women from participating in different careers, half of the population's ideas go completely unnoticed. Women have provided some of the most influential findings in history from Rosalind Franklin discovering the structure of DNA to Ada Lovelace who started the field of programming. Without these women we wouldn’t know many of the things we do today. These women and many others show that their ideas and contributions are needed and women deserve the same opportunities as men.

Although women have begun to strive more within STEM fields and higher education, they still aren’t given the same treatment as men and only make up 27% of the STEM workforce. Instead of only pushing boys to pursue their dreams and follow their passions, we should give young girls and boys equal opportunities to be whatever they want to be. In order to give young women a chance to pursue their dreams, we have to stop color coding items and providing baby dolls. Instead, we need to give women the chance to explore different career paths from a young age and we shouldn’t force them into roles that are made “for women.” 

“Because Barbie can be anything, women can be anything.”

Works Cited:
“Women in STEM Statistics: Progress and Challenges”, stemwomen.com, 2023
- Quotes from Barbie movie (2023)
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Submitted by Cyber Vipers, FRC Team 8717