In the spirit of inspiring young girls to follow their dreams, the Wicked Uncle Elves worked with YouGov to survey 2,162 women, 992 of whom either work in STEM or have qualifications in a STEM field. We wanted to answer the question: which toy inspired women in STEM the most?
The survey
In our survey, we wanted to find out whether the toys they played with as girls influenced these cool STEM women to pursue their current paths. Here are the toys our respondents reported that they most enjoyed playing with as children:
Board games: a clear winner
As the chart above shows, a whopping 80% of all women said that they enjoyed playing with board games as a child. Games such as Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble are heavily focused on being one step ahead of the other players.
Being able to think clearly and manage many different components of a board game are difficult skills to learn as a child, but incredibly helpful for future learning.
Wooden toys & jigsaw puzzles: first runner-up
Our survey revealed that the second favourite toys amongst STEM women were wooden toys and jigsaw puzzles. 65% of women said they enjoyed playing with these types of toys as youngsters.
Wooden toys and jigsaws require logical thinking and patience, with a heavy focus on problem solving. There are many STEM careers that benefit from these types of skills, such as an engineer or a surgeon.
Science sets: fun, but not a favourite
Surprisingly, science sets were at the bottom of the list! Just 23% of women said they played with and enjoyed STEM-related sets such as chemistry labs, science kits and solar system sets.
What else did our survey reveal?
It was clear from our research that not all toys have to be about learning! After all, more women enjoyed playing with plushies and baby dolls (64%) when they were children than with science sets. Similarly, 51% of women stated that they once enjoyed playing with action figures and fashion dolls.
While many people don’t think of these kinds of toys as encouraging STEM skills, it’s important to note that being in tune with your logical and deep-thinking side is key to excelling in most STEM careers. Dolls, plushies, and action figures can help children learn about compassion and caring about others, and sometimes, this can be a reason people choose a career path in cancer research or medicine.
Inspiring children with toys
Whilst researching the topic, the Wicked Uncle Elves were contacted on Twitter by women who work in STEM and those who felt their experience led them away from STEM as a career choice. They shared interesting perspectives on their personal experiences as children playing with toys:
I am not a woman working in STEM because I was not allowed to have toys like Meccano because they were boys toys. I hid my lego in the wardrobe, hoping Father Christmas would bring me more but it didn’t work. Has much changed? I don’t know.
— Suzy Ramone (@SuzyRamone) November 7, 2020
Mike O’Shea from Wicked Uncle said: “The women that broke into the male-dominated industry of STEM are an inspiration to young girls everywhere, and we wanted to celebrate that.
“Toys play a huge role in shaping a child’s skill set, helping them to learn more about what they’re interested in. It is great to see that these toys had such an impact on these women when they were younger.
“It’s interesting to see how these toys influence our future careers, and we hope to see young girls everywhere picking up a new toy this year, that will hopefully inspire them to follow their dreams and achieve great things.”
Looking for some brilliant educational toys for girls and boys? Check out what’s popular on our website!
Why did the germ cross the microscope? To get to the other slide!
