A recent CBC article made me flash back to my own childhood, and remember the joy of looking at, and if I was lucky having a toy purchased for me. What I did forget was the vast difference and prevalent aisle or department segregation performed by these retailers. My brother and I would flock to the “boy toys” department which was laden with goods such as lego, action figures and sporting goods whilst elsewhere in the store there was a very obvious girls department which was predominately pink and filled with dolls, and arts + crafts and the like(I think!). The point being, that from a young age each gender is almost told what is socially acceptable for them to play with for their respective gender.Whilst I don’t completely agree that separating the aisles/toys is wrong, as based on sales studies and statistics it’s probably the most efficient method to sell goods, it caused an engineer to create a new toy.

A young girl playing with Goldieblox

Debbie Sterling, a recent Stanford engineering graduate created Goldieblox. Goldblox are little construction sets, that like lego, are separable and attachable and can form various objects. Unlike lego however, the colours are of the pieces are pink, purple and line amongst other colours that are found in the “girls department”.  She believes that having a mathematical/scientific toy for girls at that young of an age, may spark an interest in those kinds of skills as they grow older, and pursue degrees.