Three female engineers build toys to inspire young girls to love science

Christina Farr – VB News – Tuesday, 21 August 2012 (originally published 18 Aug)

Image: Kickstarter

When Alice Brooks was a little girl, she asked her father for a Barbie doll. He gave her a saw, which she used to hack a dollhouse.

Alice, now 24, excelled at school and went on to study mechanical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This summer, while enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University, a project has been brewing: can a toy inspire the next generation of young girls to love science, technology, engineering and math?

Convinced of the merits of the idea, Alice teamed up with two fellow grad students, Bettina Chen and Jennifer Kessler, to form a ‘toys for girls’ company known as “Maykah”. As grad students at Stanford, and throughout their academic careers, the women noticed that in all their courses (advanced linear algebra, electromagnetic engineering, and so on) very few of their classmates were female . . .

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