by Katie Parkinson

Six-and-a-half year old Ava Poelling wears a Batman cape while playing with dolls. As a little girl with two older brothers, she is able to have the best of both worlds when it comes to toys. Legos, baby dolls, and good old fashioned blocks are all favorites. However, other little girls aren’t as lucky. For whatever reason, they haven’t been exposed to, or encouraged to play with traditionally boys’ toys.

Part of this is due to our culture. According to Ava’s mother, Melissa Poelling, especially in big, retail toy stores, there is a clear distinction between “girls’ toys” and “boys’ toys.” For the little princess there are dolls, dress-up sets, and Easy-Bake Ovens. For the future engineer there are Erector Sets, construction models and science kits.

This kind of early gender bias is what inspired engineer Debbie Sterling to invent GoldieBlox in 2012, although it only recently became popular with its July Toys ‘R’ Us debut. This toy is meant to help girls ages 5 to 9 become interested in building. Girls read GoldieBlox’ story and follow along with her as she tries to create a spinning machine to help her dog chase his tail. While it might seem silly, by the end of the book, they have built a fully functioning belt drive.

According to an interview between Sterling and How Stuff Works, Sterling wanted to help change the statistic that 89 percent of engineers are men. A friend of hers had mentioned how playing with her brother’s toys had fostered an interest in engineering while growing up. This got her thinking about creating a toy to help girls develop spatial and problem solving skills early on.

“I think anything that encourages girls to get into science and math should be done,” Poelling said. “I’m not sure creating a gender specific toy is the way to do it, but certainly there’s got to be a way to get girls interested in building if they don’t have a predilection toward it. Ava was naturally interested in building, but we’ve had other little girls come over – who are only or oldest children or have only sisters – and they immediately gravitate towards the dolls.”

This is why GoldieBlox is more than just a toy. Is it going to suddenly mean 50 percent of engineers are women? No. But what it does do is open up a new world of possibilities to young girls. At a time when they are flooded with subtle messages that girls like to bake, that they like to take care of babies, that they don’t like to build spaceships and they don’t like racing cars, GoldieBlox is a starting point that girls can use to say, ‘I like building things.’ Maybe this turns into ‘I like creating spaceships.’ And maybe this leads to ‘I like engineering.’

This doesn’t mean that playing with dolls and baking in the kitchen isn’t perfectly fine. It just means that now there is another option.

“Boys are just as happy in the kitchen when they’re two and three years old,” Poelling said. “Girls are just as interested in engineering toys.”

It is society that tells them they are wrong, and GoldieBlox is admirably changing this way of thinking, one girl at a time.