Barbie Plans STEM InitiativeBarbie Plans STEM Initiative

Mattel is encouraging girls’ interests in STEM with a new doll, giveaways, books and coding content featuring Barbie.

First, the toy brand has unveiled Robotic Engineer Barbie, a doll to encourage interest in science, technology, engineering and math, fields where young women are generally underrepresented.

Through a multi-year partnership with Tynker, Mattel is also launching six free Barbie-inspired coding courses, which are available at tynker.com/BarbieYCBA.

The course load explores, logic, problem–solving and coding fundamentals with Barbie branding.

“For almost 60 years, Barbie has exposed girls to roles where women are underrepresented to show them that they can be anything,” says Lisa McKnight, general manager and senior vice president, Barbie. “By playing with Robotics Engineer Barbie on and offline, we are giving girls a new platform for play in their imaginary world and teaching them important skills for their real world.”

Additional Barbie/STEM-related endeavors include:

“Our mission is to empower youth to become the makers of tomorrow through coding, and the Barbie brand is an ideal partner to help us introduce programming to a large number of kids in a fun, engaging way,” says Krishna Vedati, co-founder and chief executive officer, Tynker. “It’s critical that all young learners have an opportunity to explore the possibilities available in STEM fields, and Tynker’s Barbie programming experience is a valuable tool to introduce kids of all ages to these concepts while building their coding skills.”