GoldieBlox

A. The main facts about the activities of the company.

GoldieBlox is a toy company whose mission is to inspire the next generation of female engineers. The company was founded in 2012 by Debbie Sterling, a Stanford engineering graduate who had the objective of “disrupting the pink aisle”, and decided to create a toy which would introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age. GoldieBlox seeks to “close the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math” – and change the way people think about toys for girls”.
The statistics corroborate the founder’s concern about this particular gender gap: only 14% of total engineers worldwide are female. In fact, in average in a room full of 25 engineers, only 3 are women. The main reason is that, on average, girls lose interest in science, technology, engineering and math at the age of 8.
GoldieBlox sells a wide range of products for girls towards ages 4-12. After doing some research, Sterling found that girls enjoy storytelling, so each GoldieBlox set comes with a story about Goldie, a girl inventor. Thus, girls can build simple machines to help Goldie overcome obstacles. Therefore, these toys help girls develop spatial skills, learn basic engineering concepts, and build confidence in problem-solving. Each toy introduces new characters and concepts.

B. The Ethical challenges this company is addressing.

With this project, Goldieblox is aiming to outcome, or at least level up, the number of girls who like or enjoy engineering, by giving the alternative to the usual kind of games offered to girls -such as cooking sets, dolls, princess’s costumes and more-.
In a society where girls should behave properly, where they are supposed to act nice, dress up, be beautiful, fragile, and, in conclusion, be the princess of every prince, Goldieblox encourages girls and their parents, to expand the comfort zone of these girls, and let them experiment with what has been considered, for over a hundred years, “boys’ toys” .

Taking into account the 2 main premises expressed in the website which are: “Women and men are equally capable of being engineers” and “only 14% of engineers are women”, the obvious conclusion is that “a lot of women who could be engineers aren’t becoming engineers”, and thus, one of Goldieblox’s ethical challenge is to “get more women into engineering”.
Also, the lack of opportunities and role models for women is a similar problem: as the founder of Goldieblox learned when she was little, construction toys are made and marketed for boys, and no girls, Goldieblox is trying to create, as we stated before, more engineer women, that can become in a future, role models to other girls.

C. What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it?

Goldieblox is a project that with each toy and each problem solved brings girls closer to a more equal future. If women believe they can make a change and that they are good at these activities, they will be more willing to fight for it.

The company looks for higher gender equality in terms of labor opportunities. Using a funny and innovative design, Goldieblox is helping arise girls’ skills to construct and design. It is time to provide women the sources to act by themselves, so that they don’t depend on anybody. As it is stated on the web: “There’s nothing wrong with being a princess, we just think girls can build their own castles too”. Is not that there are more desirable jobs or projects, all have the same value if they are what you are being inspired by, however what this firm, and us ourselves, believe is that whatever is the choice done, people need to have the same possibilities and the same formation.

All of that, is complemented by the inspiring way of talking of the CEO Debbie Sterling, whose personal experience in the engineering world has pushed her to act. In a society in which the number of women going to the university is raising, seeing the small amount who engages in engineering majors surprises a lot. Are women less prepared to do these kind of jobs? The answer is NO. They can do these jobs even better than any men, so it is fundamental to help them develop their skills to do it. Let’s break stereotypes and start by small games to motivate these creative and challenging aspects that have been killed by society for so long.

D.The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

Some aspects worth being stand out are:
  Competitors: As a result of the great success of the project many firms will try to introduce in the sector, making competence stronger. However, we think that not many firms can do what Goldieblox does. Why? Goldieblox has not been created as a typical business strategy to make profits, but to make girls understand that engineering (and any other kind of studies) has nothing to do with gender. In contrast, if some firms decide to copy the Goldieblox’s model in the future as a consequence of its success, they would not be doing it because of an ethical reason, but to make profits. We think that the success of this company is mainly due to its truly ethical intention, so at the end it is not that easy to copy it by other companies.
  Transparency: The firm is already putting effort in transparency, but as it is a firm with an ethical aspect it is important to continue chasing major transparency objectives so they become more trustworthy.
  Globalization: They have the need of continue growing and of selling around the world. They are nowadays in Amazon so they have access to a huge market, even though they are not known around the world, so they need to promote themselves in a more intensive way.

To sum up, our view is that Goldieblox is doing its job very well because it is continuously achieving girls to see engineering as something totally normal for women. We also want to highlight that the company’s success is not only due to the important ethical issue that is addressing, but also the beautiful design of its toys as well as the inspiring quotes that represent Goldieblox, which encourage people to buy its products and, therefore, to desire a more equal world in terms of job opportunities.