She’s chic, she’s cute, she’s a Computer Engineer? Really? Are you sure?

There’s been a lot of commentary, good and bad, about Barbie and her new “career”, but that’s not going to stop me from adding one more.

That all said, I voted for the new career, heck yeah. Why not? But I doubt that her mere existence will have a significant impact on the choices the next generation of women make for their careers. My sisters and I each had a Barbie, sure, but she had no career – just a house, a private jet, a yacht, and a lot of clothing that wasn’t much use to her once she was missing her head. No, I won’t hazard a guess how she paid for those things. Honestly, at those ages, career choices weren’t exactly something with which we were concerned. Barbie could have been a neurosurgeon or a rocket scientist or a waitress and we wouldn’t have cared. Although plastic surgeon Barbie might have come in handy if she came with a restoration kit to fix the crack in Barbie’s neck that always seemed to result from taking her head off too many times. 

A love of technology and computers doesn’t come from whether or not you play with a doll, it comes from within – the same as it does for men. That passion, that drive, isn’t something you can attempt to foster by giving a girl a doll or prevent from blooming by denying her the same. Studies are showing a lack of exposure to people and information about the field is what keeps kids – male and female – from pursuing computer science. Anecdotally this certainly seems to hold true: my mother is a technologist, once a programmer, and three of her four children (only one of whom is male) hold degrees in computer science and mathematics. The studies are backing this up – details, not dolls, are what’s needed to encourage young women – and men – to dive into technology related careers.

There’s a general increase in the next generation enrolling in computer science programs across the board, and among 12-17 year olds 85 percent are interested in the hard sciences, according to the Lemelson–M.I.T Invention Index. “But nearly two-thirds polled said they may ultimately pursue other professions because they don’t have a mentor or understand what's involved in a science, math or engineering career.” [Scientific American, “U.S. Students say “yah for science””] That would seem to indicate that awareness is the issue, but not in the way many perceive.

Interestingly enough, the CRA (Computer Research Association), which tracks computer science degrees and faculty make up, shows an increase in the number of women on the faculty in computer science at universities, with 24 percent now being women. While the percentage of bachelor degrees in computer science awarded to women is a dismal 12 percent, the percentage of graduate degrees is 23 percent, which appears closely tied to faculty rates. The percentage of women serving as computer science faculty in universities has increased in general. It is important to remember, too, that these statistics track the percentage of women working in a field, which assumes they are part of the labor force in the first place. The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that in January 2010, the percentage of women who were employed was 53.9 percent, compared to 63.3 percent of all men (a number significantly lower than a year ago, indicating men have been hid hardest by downsizing and the economic situation).

Further possibly making Barbie irrelevant in the big scheme of things is the need to show computer science as not “nerdy.” The same Lemelson-M.I.T. Invention Index indicated this is simply not a valid assumption any more.

  Contrary to traditional stereotypes of the “geeky scientist,” more than half of teens surveyed (55 percent) believe scientists, engineers and mathematicians are best  described as “intelligent” and one-quarter (25 percent) chose “successful.” Only five percent of teens selected “nerdy” as the best description.

So it isn’t just young women that aren’t heading toward technology, it’s young men, too, and it’s not their belief that it would make them “nerds” that is stopping them. Given our growing reliance on technology for everything from banking to shopping to the news to communicating to relaxing it seems as if simply focusing on ways to expose more everyone to the myriad ways in which men and women participate in creating and maintaining technology seems a much better way to spend our time than analyzing the potential impact of the fictional career choice of a fictional doll. Remember, 85% of these kids are interested, they just don’t have the information they need to make the decision to follow such a career path.

The study indicated that the reasons offered by young men and women for not pursuing a career in the sciences was that they didn’t know anyone who worked in the fields (31 percent) or didn’t understand what people did in those fields (28 percent). Girls – and likewise boys - aren’t going to get that information from Barbie. It’s got to come from you and me, as professionals in the fields. We need to reach out to them, somehow, and give them the information they need to make a decision to follow in our footsteps.

Details, not dolls, are the key to encouraging the next generation to fall in love with technology and make a career out of it.