Barbie launches six new dolls celebrating female scientists | Hacker News Reader

Barbie launches six new dolls celebrating female scientists

abc.net.au

44 pointswombatmobile63 comments

I remember when similar techniques were employed by the Soviets (posters of woman in the army, posters of woman making weapons, etc.) We now consider that to be propaganda.

I am a profesional in the science industry and the profession is so debased I would not recommend my children to get into the field. We all talk about burnout and loss of meaning. We see other eras (eg. the 50s-60s in IBM, Bell Labs, etc.) as a past golden age. This seems to be something generalized and across technical fields.

Instead of focusing on figuring out what happened we have all the HR people working nonstop to try to pump more people into the field and painting it as a rosy.

Incredible that something has trivial as "a doctor doll" is seen here as controversial or propaganda.

Makes me wonder what propaganda is going on in the comments.

Oh, come on.

There have been Barbie doctor dolls and astronaut dolls since at least the 80s.

That is besides the point. The point is the constant drilling of this topic in every form, painting the woman as oppressed superheroes and males as privileged oppressors. This with the goal of getting more people into a debased field while salaries and family-work balance keep getting worse.

You seem to be projecting a lot on to the article that wasn’t actually there.

I would question why you feel the need to do that.

> painting the woman as oppressed superheroes and males as privileged oppressors

Which part of article is painting women as oppressed and which one even mentions men?

And also, the amount of scientists is limited by open positions. There is literally no need for anyone to higher up supplies of those, you have dozens of PhDs for every post doc position.

"I am a profesional in the science industry and the profession is so debased I would not recommend my children to get into the field. We all talk about burnout and loss of meaning."

I'm curious to hear more about this. What's causing the debasement and loss of meaning in the field?

It is a long topic and the causes I don't understand well. We spend more time trying to obtain funding and satisfying some metrics rather than doing actual research we find meaningful or useful to society. The competition among peers in your same lab makes difficult to build healthy work relationships. We see how much of the people that become successful do it so in a way which is orthogonal to scientific values.

This might be something that has been going on since "the world is world" but talking with the old timers it seems it has been exacerbated in the last decades.

In addition to that all, in the universities and research labs, the HR and management departments have exploded (Have you seen the graph at [1]?) And they all seem to focus in stuff like in the article rather than taking care of the existing talent.

This article might lay the issues better than I did [2]

[1] https://wtfhappenedin1971home.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/ey...

[2] http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/decline.txt

>We now consider that to be propaganda.

We always considered it propaganda. Just like modern day advertising and marketing. Its all propaganda. They are trying to convince you to believe something (that is likely not true. ie: we have the best product)

The problem is when nobody recognizes it as propaganda anymore, like this article.

The article is primary about two Australian women who served as models for those toys.

I took a 'Proper Gander' at it and without praising Mattel I couldn't overly condemn them for it either.

> were employed by the Soviet

the difference is that they worked

What properties the doll or figurine have to satisfy to not be propaganda?

There are hundreds of barbie occupations: yoga teachers barbies, ballerina barbies, hairdresser barbies, chef barbie, meme maker (? lol) barbie ... do they all count as propaganda too?

One good step would be to stop romanticizing everything it touches as being glamorous.

This gives Mattel way more credit than they deserve.

They're making these dolls because society has figured out that we need to value women's contributions, and everyone agrees. Mattel is lagging, not leading on this issue.

Go back a bit in time and when society had different values, Barbie had different professions.

Fair, but they still have a large cultural impact and this is still a net positive impact. When kids run into the toy section at Walmart, they still see a lot of Barbie. So having this happen is still an overall good thing, even if it's late.

Will children care or even know?

The goal is (or should be) that they will learn, and be inspired. Nothing wrong with that.

From one perspective, they won't know or care either way, so that's why it's important to showcase diverse careers and individuals, so that it can just become "normal".

> why it's important to showcase diverse careers and individuals

You see people of all genders of every profession on TV and everywhere else already, a few dolls parading aside won't make much impact.

“Dolls not making an impact” is exactly the point.

What part of the article is giving Mattel undo credit? It seems mainly to be a reporting of facts.

This is an obvious submarine article.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I have seen this story make the rounds in my local (non-English) reporting as well. Did Mattel really pay each any every one of these media? The much easier theory is that news outlets crave feel-good stories that no one will object to, like this one, to balance out all the grim world events.

It's not that they get paid explicitly. Their PR knows journalists and just casually suggest that if they have some space, how about this {article}? We'll even do most of the writing for you. That frees up your time to investigate real things.

Is it wrong for Mattel to do this? Wouldn’t most companies do a press push when they release a new product? I don’t see how this is any different than an article about the latest Apple product.

This is typical company not wanting to be on the wrong side and pandering.

Only thing they care about is the bottom line.

Nevertheless, it would be good to see different types of Barbies if not only for the fact that if they get discontinued they'll make good collectibles.

There is already Doctor Barbie though. Since the 80s!

These are not generic occupation Barbies, but modeled on some real world women:

> Kirby White is an Australian doctor based in Victoria who pioneered Gowns for Doctors, an initiative behind surgical gowns that can be washed and reused by frontline workers during the pandemic. Dr White was inspired to create the gowns after her clinic experienced a shortage just three weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

I don't see how it changes much of anything. The novelty is not to propagate being doctor to girls (quite normal occupation for women these days), but that this particular woman was made into barbie.

Such as surgeon in 1973, astronaut in 1965, and business executive in 1960?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie%27s_careers

Cherry picked.

News Anchor: 2010

President: 2000

Basketball player: 2019

Dentist: 1997

> Cherry picked.

The dolls were available to buy. Would you prefer they stopped selling their other models, to focus on these?

Point is you can support any thesis by selecting supportive evidence. I could as well say they are a backward firm for not showing Barbie doing the things on my list until way too late.

Are they also a backward firm for not making a hairdresser Barbie until 2008, and a make-up artist Barbie until 2007?

I had typical boy's toys - lego and some action figures. None of them were news anchors, presidents, basketball players, dentists, or famed male scientists. Nor were any surgeons or business executives. Only a few astronauts. Is that also evidence of... something?

They are not scientists, they are doctors.

Four have an stethoscope, the other one looks the same but without the stethoscope and there is another one looking like a business woman.

So, where is the software engineer Barbie?

They couldn't make room for software engineer Barbie (dresses too frumpy), but instead they made room for pharma sales rep Barbie.

At least 2 of them are doctors that do research. Are they not scientists?

Research is done by researchers, and they hardly carry a phonendoscope.

For the record:

Duties of a doctor

    Monitoring and caring for patients in hospitals and clinics
    Investigating, diagnosing and treating the health conditions of patients
    Prescribing and reviewing patients’ medication
    Taking accurate notes, as a legal record and for other healthcare professionals to use
    Working with other doctors, healthcare professionals and management staff
    Educating people about their health
    Teaching and supervising trainee doctors.

More senior doctors may also:

    Manage a team or department and organise workloads
    Research and review processes.

source: https://www.bellerbys.com/guides/careers/hospital-doctor

Well, first, two of the people these are based on aren't doctors at all; they're biomedical researchers with no background as practicing doctors.

However, the random careers website you cite may be giving you a slightly confused idea about actual doctors, too. Many doctors do research, and a lot of medical research gets done by practicing doctors. That website isn't intended as an exhaustive guide to everything that doctors do.

I don’t understand what you are criticizing. These dolls are modeled after real people, some of whom are scientists. Are you saying these people don’t deserve to be called scientists?

Quoting article: British woman Sarah Gilbert, a 59-year-old professor at Oxford University who co-developed the AstraZeneca vaccine, is another scientist to be honoured with a doll.

This is one of dolls. Quite odd choice of person to gatekeep as a scientist.

> So, where is the software engineer Barbie?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Engineer_Barbie

> Computer Engineer Barbie is the 126th career version of Mattel's Barbie doll. In response to poll results indicating strong support for computer engineers, the doll set was created and introduced in 2010.

Is medicine not science?

I assume your 'business woman' is Professor Gilbert; seems to be the only non-clinical name.

> So, where is the software engineer Barbie?

Barbie tend to be on the social conservative side.

>So, where is the software engineer Barbie?

She realized her female hormones and intellect meant that nature never intended women to be software engineers anyway, and that she was only coaxed into considering such a career path by the sexist agenda of Marxist feminist radicals to begin with. So she stayed at home and became a tradwife.

> The first Barbie astronaut outfit, "Barbie Miss Astronaut," was released in 1965,

according to this about the 2013 "Mars Explorer" version: https://www.space.com/22247-mars-barbie-doll-nasa-mattel.htm...

I didn't find a first "doctor" but ive delved deeper into Barbie history already this morning than anticipated. There's much more information to be had.

When there's a gold rush, shovels sell well

Ha ha this is the Lisa Lionheart thing for real. Simpsons predicts the future again.

It's not Lisa Lionheart, it's the copy cat doll that the big corp released at the end of the episode, when they realized that there was a market for something like Lisa Lionheart.

There was no copycat doll in that episode. Malibu Stacey gets a new hat but is as sexist as ever.

https://comb.io/RHnRVl

You're absolutely correct. It appears my memory of that episode was way too rosy.

Is there something wrong with me or the strong scent of irony is real with this one?

*cough* body-positive feminism *cough*

I'm taking bets on how much time elapses between now and when Mattel comes out with a transgender line.

> I'm taking bets on how much time elapses between now and when Mattel comes out with a transgender line.

Er, how would that differ? Its not like Barbie’s sex-assigned-at-birth is included on a certificate with the doll in the first place, or like the doll is so anatomically correct that one could determine what that likely was from the kind of genitalia and whether or not they had the telltale signs of surgical modification.

Sex is observed, not assigned, this is true even in the case of intersex individuals. The modern construct of gender is largely a function of environmental and media exposure. Unlike sex, no falsifiable tests exist for it. Don't confuse the two.

> Sex is observed, not assigned

Various indicia are observed, sex (more accurately, “socially ascribed gender”, but the established terminology is “sex”) is assigned based on some subset of sex-related indicia.

> The modern construct of gender

The modern understanding of the distinction between sex, ascribed gender, and gender identity may be new, but the things themselves aren’t modern constructs. Biological sex (or at least the individual traits that make it up), socially ascribed gender, and gender identity have always existed.

> Various indicia are observed, sex (more accurately, “socially ascribed gender”, but the established terminology is “sex”) is assigned based on some subset of sex-related indicia.

This is an intentional and politically motivated conflation, that I notice you have attempted in several different threads, and it's why I replied here at all. Sex is a hard attribute that can be measured empirically at the chromosomal level, stop attempting to redefine it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex

Eh, I'll take that bet. They're still a company, and by the numbers, I would think it represents a very small minority. The sales probably wouldn't make it worth it. It might be worth it as a marketing tactic though, who knows.

Trans advocacy is a policy game at every level, not a numbers game. At the national level for example, the UN universal periodic review began recently including trans rights in its methodology. It is far more likely Mattel would respond to this kind of pressure from some kind of industry group than any expectation of high sales (although given a decade of this kind of influence organic sales will be a natural consequence, which is why advocacy efforts are so important to watch to understand the future of society)

These look great! Can't wait to buy some for my son, he'll enjoy playing with them.

Agreed, and great point, LOL! This doesn't solve the actual problem at hand. It's more like a token like "hey you can do it too". It does not give you the skills you need, like spatial skills, for example, which you learn from playing with Lego, etc., which is crucial for success in engineering. If you don't have these skills, you will be in for a ride in formal engineering school. Yeah, you can learn it during your weed-out courses, but have fun!

I am female and I have a twin brother. Fortunately my parents were awesome and I didn't have to deal with as much gender bias as other people. I got to play with all of my brother's toys and I had no interest in dolls. I also got to play with computers, which was the best, LOL!

In order to actually help solve this issue, unlike Mattel, here are some useful tools (toys):

Here, if you have a child who is a girl, get her GoldieBlox in order for her to intuitively develop spatial skills. GoldieBlox is designed by a Stanford Engineer and has free virtual STEM Camps: https://goldieblox.com/

Here is a Wikipedia post about GoldieBlox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldieBlox

I also learned coding from Lego Mindstorms. It's spendy (expensive) but it's worth every penny. It also teaches you advanced interfacing in an intuitive manner: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/robot-inventor-51515

Also look on Etsy for intuitive gender neutral STEM toys.

Always wanted a Kengineer.

He's well intentioned but always makes mistakes. Comes action packed with three built-in excuses.

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