FollowIt is never late to have this surprise coming from toy producers. A Lego female scientist characters kit is available for sale.
Social sciences argue for a long time that gender is not a natural fact, but a social construction. Girls and boys are educated from early ages how they both should behave like. Gender is a social role that, as any other role, needs to be taught and practiced to be displayed and approved as proper. We still live in this dual world vision, even though things started changing at a faster pace, with the mild beginnings taking place around a century ago.
In the world of men, they predominantly hold the power, whether it is political, financial, religious or, well, almost any other kind. Knowledge production and distribution have traditionally been delegated to men, whereas women were predominantly been assigned as caregivers. Women are predominant in the lower paid jobs in the healthcare services.
Often, as soon as a position becomes increasingly powerful in society, men tend to take it over. It is the case with computer scientists, for example. Until the 1980s, women were about half of the computer sciences faculties students. Now men dominate it and they take up most of the positions in high-tech fields. Twitter recently announced in a diversity report that its number of female employees and female managers is very low.
Lego female scientist characters already a hit
In this situation, it is encouraging to see that a seven years old girl’s letter to a toy producer managed to have a real impact, although this does not solve ingrained gender inequalities. Earlier this year, Charlotte sent Lego this letter
“Dear Lego company; My name is Charlotte. I am 7 years old and I love Legos, but I don’t like that there are more Lego boy people than girls.
Today I went to a store and I saw Legos in two sections – the pink girls’, and blue boys’. All the girls did was sit at home, go to the beach and shop, and they had no jobs, but the boys went on adventures, worked, saved people, had jobs and even got to swim with sharks.
I want you to make more Lego girl people and let them go on adventures and have fun, OK?! From Charlotte.”
As a response, Lego released a new kit called ‘The Research Institute’. The kit contains three female characters working in STEM fields. For the moment, the kit is sold out and there is a 30 days delay for shipping. We are glad to hear about this release and hope that many girls will enjoy the new set, as well as boys, fathers, mothers and everyone else. That is because we will all benefit from a world where everyone can equally achieve hers or his full potential. The Lego female scientist characters can foster a bit of that world.
