News that Mattel has created a Barbie doll with a computer science ensemble prompted two female executives at the database firm Ingres to reflect on why that had bucked gender stereotypes to make their careers in software engineering — and whether the new doll would prompt other young women to do the same.
“Some teenagers rebel against their parents by getting tattoos, body piercings, having a child out of wedlock, or abusing drugs,” writes Emma McGrattan, senior vice president of engineering at Ingres. “I rebelled by acquiring a degree in electronic engineering.”
In a delightful post titled “Barbie and Me,” McGrattan tells of growing up as a “tom boy” in Ireland who idolized her dad, a mechanical services engineer, yet disregarded his advice when he sought to discourage her from following in his footsteps.
McGrattan recalled that when she was growing up there were separate schools for Irish girls “that didn’t even teach math to the level required to qualify to study engineering at the University level.”
McGrattan was skeptical about whether a doll would motivate future female engineers but said she would be speaking at a Girl Geek event at the University of Edinburg in March and would ask women there what they thought of “the Barbie thing.”
Meanwhile, her Ingres colleague, product management vice president Deb Woods, cheered high-tech Barbie in a post that recalled the time her own daughter, then four years old, had sat in her assistant’s chair because — as she told her shocked mom — “that’s where girls sit, they get coffee and answer the phone for important men.”
Said Woods: “Girls today can be anything they want, they just need to be exposed to all the opportunities open to them . . . Hats off to Mattel for trying a different angle on this one.”