When I was a young girl, Barbie wasn’t much more than a doll for young girls to play dress-up with. Sure there were Barbies that were trying to be adventurous (my favorite was the 90’s Ice Capades version), but generally speaking, Barbie was a doll meant to make “pretty,” and pursue traditional female pursuits.

Fast forward to 2017. Enter STEM Barbie.

As a relatively new Barbie on the shelves, she stirred up quite the conversation. She comes with a STEM kit, full of experiments that engage young girls with science, math, technology, and engineering. She is wearing a lab coat, and has goggles (albeit, with a swanky mini skirt). The reviews of her are everything from “why is she wearing a mini skirt if she is supposedly working in a lab?” to “why is her STEM activity to build a spinning clothes rack?” It’s not that these questions aren’t important, but they speak to a larger question when it comes to how we engage young women in science and tech. Does it really matter if Barbie is building a clothes rack, rather than, say, rebuilding an engine? For some young girls, this is a way to get them engaged through a kind of play that they are familiar with. In the same way that pink Legos, perhaps, shouldn’t be the end of the world, maybe STEM Barbie isn’t either. Since STEM fields have been dominated by men for so long, and the encouragement of young men to pursue the field so normalized, it is a struggle to think of how we might engage girls. Our engagement with them doesn’t necessarily need to look the same as it does with boys. I think there is something to be said for allowing young women to engage with the STEM field using whatever they happened to be interested in-and not being critical of that if it doesn’t follow the pattern of how we encourage boys.

So what IS my problem with STEM Barbie?

I think this doll represents a challenge I see that we face in the aviation industry, which is a way to have meaningful conversations about the role of women and other underrepresented groups in the industry. In the ways that the media might celebrate the creation of STEM Barbie, right now it’s fashionable for air carriers to leverage “Black History Month,” or “Women’s History Month,” to celebrate the ‘all female flights,’ or the first black female airline captain (I don’t intend to call out any specific carrier, just do a quick google search, and they are readily available). I am GLAD we celebrate these women and African Americans, I am THRILLED that the industry is making a much more conscientious effort to promote diverse individuals in the industry. But now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. There is work to be done and it has to go much further than an all-female crew or the first STEM Barbie.

What do we change? How do we address both the need to celebrate the advancements we have made, without overshadowing the work that still needs done? I don’t know that I have any answers for this yet, I am still trying to work through my own thoughts on these issues. What I can say is this, don’t get lazy. Rejoice in the good work that has been done, and is being done, but keep pushing the boundaries and asking for more. That is the only way we will see the change we want to see.

Safe Travels!

Shannon