Barbie heads down a new high tech career path with new “Career of the Year” model
By Staff on Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Toy manufacturing company, Mattel, has announced that the new ‘Career of the Year’ Barbie will take on a new occupation as a robotic engineer.
This is in order to encourage young girls to imagine themselves as budding engineers, working in the STEM job field, as well as adding to Mattel’s ‘You Can Be Anything’ campaign.
With the doll selling at $13.99, Barbie will be equipped with various engineer accessories, such as, safety goggles, a doll-sized laptop and a humanoid robot. Not only this, the doll will also be available in four skin tones to promote racial equality.
Mattel worked closely with associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT and founder of the social robot company Jibo Inc, Cynthia Braeazal, in order to make sure the doll was an accurate representative of the STEM field.
Girls need more role models. Let’s inspire the next generation to see themselves in careers underrepresented by women. By encouraging more girls to explore STEM with Robotics Engineer #Barbie, we show them that they can be anything. https://t.co/kRIQ50Ox4Y #YouCanBeAnything pic.twitter.com/aqHFYqDQ6r
— Barbie (@Barbie) June 26, 2018
Braezal states, ‘I think it opens up girls’ imaginations [to the idea] that intelligent machines can be in their daily lives’.
The company will also offer Barbie inspired coding lessons and games, to encourage children further to enter the world of STEM.
By @sammieman97
