Avoiding collateral damage in education through thoughtful product development

Yesterday my 7-year-old showed me a math game, Prodigy, that is popular among his friends. The concept was fantastic but as I watched the gender inequality built into the gameplay and product, I was deeply disappointed. Here’s how it goes: you pick your character (frequently reminiscent of Pokemon) and encounter other characters that you must battle. You must attack your opponent and for each hit, you have to answer a math question correctly.

It was very clear which gender it was targeted towards. Studies have shown that the motivation behind playing video games differs for the two sexes: while boys frequently want to compete (duels, matches) and use guns and explosives in the game, most girls' primary motivations are completion (collectibles, complete all missions) and immersing themselves in other worlds.

As I watched this gameplay, curiosity got the better of me and I asked my kids if they thought it was designed with a particular gender in mind. “Definitely boys”, my son replied. To which my 10-year-old daughter added with biting sarcasm, “But don’t worry, the next version will be for girls and it’ll have Disney princesses that invite you to tea if you get the answer right.” Ouch… OK so if my 7 and 10-year-olds see this gender targeting in the product so clearly, how are educational startups not sensitive to this when they have a social contract to educate both boys AND girls equally?

I recognize that many educational initiatives are indeed sensitive to gender equality in their offering. I am deeply grateful that Khan Academy and Scratch are truly gender-neutral - their badges, their characters, the user interaction are all designed to be completely gender-neutral. Their approach is that gender is irrelevant in STEM. That is what I wish more startups could use as their guiding principle.

Tynker has several blog posts about the importance of getting girls to engage with STEM early – I truly appreciate that desire and intent. But when I look at the list of activities on Tynker, instead of gender neutrality I see gender segregation: there is a Hotwheels activity for boys and a Monster High activity for girls. Yes, there are also several gender-neutral activities but gender stereotypes have no place in education if we truly want girls to engage authentically with STEM.

Lego also talks about girls in engineering and yet they sell pink and purple Lego Friends. Many parents don’t take issue with the pink legos – their view is, "As long as my daughter is playing with Legos, I don’t care that it’s pink." I have two problems with this. First, Lego Friends is only more challenging than Duplo – all the other Lego series have more engineering to them. Second, there is an underlying message that the easier pink section is a girl's realm, whereas the badass EV3 in black, grey, and white, is best left to boys.

So what can we do to build gender equality into educational products:

• Educational startups need some introspection to make sure that their vision is indeed to educate boys AND girls equally. If it is, this vision needs to be a top-down message and translated into a product strategy and metrics. KPI is not just the number of users but seeing if boys and girls are staying with the program/ completing missions at an equal rate.
• Combat-based gameplay is easy to design but doesn’t engage boys and girls equally. While products taking this angle will find local maxima by targeting boys, there is an opportunity to build a wider market and find the global maximum by creating what engages both audiences. Girls seem more polarized in what engages them per this chart – a user-centered product design approach will help uncover what user personas of both sexes will engage in.
• There is no place for gender stereotypes in STEM – by not creating gender segregation and keeping all activities gender-neutral, educational products send the message that ALL STEM is for ALL sexes.
• And finally, as parents, we shouldn't give in to pink Legos and accept gender segregation in educational products – how do we tell our daughters that there are no limits to what they can do if we ourselves condone gender stereotypes? 

We can build successful educational products that don't propagate gender inequality in education. It requires taking a vision-driven approach where we measure the success of our products by whether they're making the world a little more like the one we want to live in, one that's more inclusive.