Moon landing celebrations: Barbie and the European Space Agency launch new collaboration to encourage girls to become the next generation of astronauts, engineers and space scientists
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- Published on Saturday, 20 July 2019 10:13
- Last Updated on 20 July 2019
- Monica Costa
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These photographs of Samanta posing with her doll have been released with new research from Barbie around how much knowledge parents have about space and their awareness of STEM-related careers and role models that exist within the space industry. The same survey has also been carried out by Barbie in Germany, Italy and France.

This collaboration is part of the Barbie Dream Gap Project, an on-going initiative with the goal of levelling the playing field for girls globally. Research has identified that starting at age five, many girls begin to develop limiting self-beliefs and doubt their full potential – this is called the Dream Gap. This collaboration, highlighting the fact that only 15 percent of active astronauts are female and no woman has ever landed on the moon, is part of the Barbie brand commitment to highlight role models that show girls they can be anything and help close the Dream Gap.
To mark the Apollo 11 Moon-landing anniversary, a series of motivating new short-form videos aimed at parents and young girls will be released to kick off the collaboration showing Cristoforetti welcoming girls from the UK, Germany, France and Italy into the ESA European Astronaut centre in Cologne, Germany, where they spent time shadowing her and then quizzing her about her extraordinary day job. Additionally, there will be kids-targeted content on Barbie’s successful YouTube vlogger channel highlighting Cristoforetti’s achievements.
Ersilia Vaudo-Scarpetta, Chief Diversity Officer for ESA, said: “While boys and girls generally achieve the same scores in science and math, few girls dream of becoming scientists, engineers, or space professionals. Social and cultural factors play an important role as the attitude of the family environment towards science and scientific professions. The European Space Agency is strongly engaged in promoting girls’ interest in STEM subjects and space careers in particular, as we need a diversity of talents to imagine and enable the future in space. We are therefore proud to launch ESA’s collaboration with Barbie, highlighting inspiring role models as the astronauts and encouraging girls to believe in themselves, look at the sky and dream high.”
Barbie commissioned research in the UK in June 2019, to understand parental attitudes and knowledge around STEM – to see if it could be a limiting factor, including being a possible barrier, to girls entering space jobs such as astronauts, engineers and space scientists.
Furthermore, Child Psychologist Dr Elizabeth Kilbey, who consulted Barbie around key elements of the study, fears that a lack of parental knowledge about STEM careers and role models could be “cutting their child’s dreams short, before they have even got off the ground.”
Other findings of the UK survey highlight that:
The study found eight in 10 parents are passionate about knowing how to encourage their daughter’s dreams, but 58 per cent said if she wanted to become an astronaut, they would not know how to proceed.
Liu Yang – 7%
Margaret Hamilton – 8%
Sally Ride – 7%
Yelena V. Kondakova – 7%
Yelena Serova – 6%
Svetlana Savitskaya -7%
Susan Helms – 5%
Yi So-yeon – 4%
Anousheh Ansari – 4%
Claudie Haigneré – 5%
Kathryn (‘Kathy’) Sullivan – 8%
Mae Jemison – 5%
Helen Sharman – 16%
Valentina Tereshokova – 9%
Kathleen Rubins – 5%
Katie Bouman – 6%
None of the above – 53%
Yuri Gagarin – 34%
Tim Peake – 44%
Buzz Aldrin – 50%
Alan B Shephard Jr – 12%
Michael Collins – 19%
James Lovell Jr – 13%
Elon Musk – 35%
John Glenn – 15%
John Young – 9%
Ed White – 7%
Galileo Galilei – 36%
Isaac Newton – 62%
Charles Messier – 10%
Albert Einstein – 64%
Stephen Hawking – 65%
None of the above – 8%

Monica Costa founded London Mums in September 2006 after her son Diego’s birth together with a group of mothers who felt the need of meeting up regularly to share the challenges and joys of motherhood in metropolitan and multicultural London. London Mums is the FREE and independent peer support group for mums and mumpreneurs based in London https://londonmumsmagazine.com and you can connect on Twitter @londonmums
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