For generations, Legos have been a favorite of boys and girls everywhere. But, somewhere along the way, Lego went from promoting their products to all boys and girls, as seen in 1981 ad to the right, to the more gender-specific variety. Legos marketed to boys were focused on building cities, planes, helicopters and robots. Legos for girls
were suddenly wearing pink and purple, shopping with friends, eating cupcakes and washing the family dog.
Dr Ellen Kooijman, a geochemist in Sweden, was particularly bothered by the ratio of male Legos to female:
On her blog, Kooijman, an avid Lego builder, said she recognized a gender gap among the figurines.
"As a female scientist I had noticed two things about the available Lego sets: a skewed male/female minifigure ratio and a rather stereotypical representation of the available female figures," she wrote. "It seemed logical that I would suggest a small set of female minifigures in interesting professions to make our Lego city communities more diverse."
As a result, Dr. Kooljman submitted a proposal to Lego for a set featuring female scientists and this week, Lego announced they were
moving forward with production:
We’re very excited to release Ellen Kooijman’s Female Minifigure set, featuring 3 scientists, now entitled “Research Institute” as our next LEGO Ideas set. This awesome model is an inspiring set that offers a lot for kids as well as adults. The final design, pricing and availability are still being worked out, but it’s on track to be released August 2014, so keep an eye out!
One small building block for toy equality! Let's hope this is just the beginning. Our girls deserve better.