A picture book, “Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer,” has recently come under fire after a blog post about its poor handling of the subject of women and girls in technology. The book features Barbie creating a game on her laptop, but goes downhill when she realizes, “I’ll need Steven’s and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game!”
It’s just that it completely misses the point about how Barbie can become a computer engineer. It would have been fine if she didn’t know how to code, so long as she spent the book learning the skill and not just letting a couple of guys do it for her. What we end up with is a hot mess of gender stereotypes perpetuated for the unfortunate girls who read the book.
Click here to read the full article. Casey Fiesler has also written a great remix of the book (how it should have been written!).
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