It probably sdeosn’t seem too surprising that according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) 72% of American households play computer and video games. What you may not realize though is that 42 percent of gamers are women. Or that women over 18 years of age are one of the industry’s fastest growing demographics? In fact according to ESA, adult women represent a greater portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).

42 percent of all game players are female, yet sadly; women represent less than 10 percent of the gaming workforce. This is why many video game developers are starting to actively seek women into their ranks.

There is whole world of opportunity for girl gamers right now to pursue positions as developers, designers, artists, engineers, publishers and marketers. Not just basic job opportunities, but opportunities where women are being welcomed with open arms and as being essential to the always growing field of video games.

So if your SheHero is a gamer with a love for math and science, share with her the results of this ESA study and tell her that the video game industry is waiting for her!

By the way, while we’re on the topic of video games and girls, remember that last year a study from Brigham Young University found that girls who co-play age-appropriate video games with their parents are more connected with their family, less likely to be depressed and just better behaved in general.

So rest easy the next time you see your daughter pick up the video game controller she may just be preparing for who fabulously successful career on the video game industry…

Susie Tompkins Buell was the founder and co-owner of the Esprit clothing company, which was known for its revolutionary fusion of corporate mission with social responsibility. The Esprit Foundation was created in 1990 and supported a variety of organizations in areas such as at-risk youth, AIDS awareness and direct care, women’s issues and the environment. When Susie Tompkins Buell left Esprit de Corp in 1996, she took the Foundation with her and eventually renamed it the Susie Tompkins Buell Foundation. The Foundation retained the original mission and areas of funding, including a “women and girls lens”, which screened organizations for their inclusion of women and girls, not only as recipient of services but also for their representation on boards and staff.

Both DC Comics and Marvel (the two powerhouses of the Comic Book world) have not exactly been known for their concern regarding female equality in the comic book world, though we hope that changes are the horizon. Last summer about a DC Comics announcing they were going to make a push to hire more female writers (something I haven’t exactly seen move forward yet) but it seems that maybe Stan Lee a folks and the folks at Marvel may be leading the charge in not only trying to reach the ever growing female comic book fans, but to simply incorporate a more gender equality in their characters.

Marvel announced recently that the character Carol Danvers, once known as Ms. Marvel, would take on the legacy of a legendary hero in Captain Marvel. This new ongoing series will launch in July and will be headed by a female and male writing team, Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Dexter Soy.

Now neither Carol Danvers OR Captain Marvel is by any means new to the Marvel Universe.  Carol is a former NASA scientist and Air Force pilot. As Ms. Marvel she was married to the former Captain Marvel, Chuck Yeager. The title Captain Marvel was also once held by Monica Rambeau an African-American woman in the 80s who would lead the Avengers for a time.

“Carol’s the virtual definition of a Type A personality. She’s a competitor and a control freak. At the start of our series, we see Carol pre-Captain Marvel, pre-NASA even, back when she was a fiercely competitive pilot. We’ll see her meeting one of her aviation heroes and we’ll see her youthful bravado, her swagger. Then over the course of the first arc we’re going to watch her find her way back to that hungry place. She’ll have to figure out how to be both Captain Marvel and Chuck Yeager—to marry the responsibility of that legacy with the sheer joy being nearly invulnerable and flying really [expletive] fast.” Explains DeConnick on the Marvel website.

I’m not going to try and offer a long explanation of the history of Captain Marvel or even other female Marvel characters. Because right now is the perfect time to introduce new characters into a new generation of girls desperate for awesome Superheroes.

The thing about Captain Marvel that has me more excited than anything (well aside from the characters history involving previously working for NASA and being in the USAF) is the costume.

For the first time I can remember, we’re seeing a female Superhero dressed in a costume that not only makes sense, but that I would totally let me daughter wear. Assuming at some point we’re able to see Captain Marvel be popular enough to generate Halloween costumes…

The costume was designed by artist Jamie McKelvie who had this to say, “Our idea was to give her a kind of swash-buckling costume that invoked a sense of her history as an Air Force officer. Her hair is slicked back at the sides when in costume – so her Kree-style helmet can form when she needs it.”

Yes, a Superhero in pants, with short hair and suit that looks practical versus sexy.

Maybe to some a costume redesign and short hairdo may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things. But it’s these kinds of changes that help genres like that of the Comic Book world take one more step towards including the girls.

I hope that Captain Marvel does really well becomes one more piece of proof that the young SheHeroes of today are desperate for role models they can look up to both in reality and in comic books.

Thursday April 26^th we celebrate a very special day in the world of SheHeroes and Heroes, it’s Take your Daughters and Sons to Work Day! Take your Daughters and Sons to Work Day falls on the Thursday of every April. The reason we celebrate on a Thursday each year is so that “girls and boys can take what they learn in workplaces on Thursday and apply it to the classroom on Friday. By involving whole communities—schools, girls and boys, parents, workplaces, and mentors—the program helps young people make connections between what they learn in school and their future goals.”

This year marks a particularly special year for Take your Daughters and Sons to Work Day; it’s the 10^th Anniversary! This years theme is Build Opportunity: 20 Years of Education, Empowerment, Experience”.

Take Our Daughters To Work Day was created by Gloria Steinem and Marie Wilson and the Ms. Foundation as a response to research that showed that, by the 8th grade, many girls were dropping out of school, had low self-esteem, and lacked confidence. In 2003, after criticism, the name of the program was changed to ‘‘Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day’’ and the program began t include boys. The main goal of the program is to provide ‘‘innovative strategies that empower girls and boys to overcome societal barriers to reach their full potential’.’

In the 20 years since its inception Take your Daughters and Sons to Work Day, has grown into one of the largest public awareness campaigns. The program boasts more than 37,000,000 participants annually in more than 3,000,000 organizations and workplaces in every State.

As Take your Daughters and Sons to Work Day enters into its 20^th year it’s a great opportunity to look back at what kind of difference the program has made. 20 years later the first daughters are now mothers themselves possibly taking their own daughters with them to work.

We would LOVE to hear your experience if you ever took part in Take your Daughters and Sons to Work Day! How did it shape your perception of the workplace and are participating now with your own SheHero?

S.E. Hinton was a favorite author of mine. I remember very clearly reading The Outsiders along with a number of the books Hinton wrote after it when I was in Junior High. In fact The Outsiders was required 6^th grade reading at that time. Also, like many kids of my generation, I madly loved the movie as well.

So when I came across the movie on TV, I hesitated for moment. At 9 and 7 I knew my son and daughter were quite a bit younger than I was the first time I was introduced the Outsiders. But when I saw that it was only rated PG and remembered that we had just watched the Dark Knight recently I realized the violence and subject matter was actually pretty tame compared to the PG-13 Superhero movies that are a guilty pleasure in our house.

My kids watched it and ate it up. As we watched we had some great discussions on violence, social classes, bullying, consequences and so much more. I told my 9 year old that it was actually a book and asked if maybe he would like to try reading it. I told both kids that it was one of my favorites and that I had read it many times. I was still a little hesitant at whether it was acceptable reading so I popped on the internet to see what the reading level was.

Of course while online I got distracted by reading trivia about the book and the author I loved so much.  It was than that I was blindsided by something I should have known.

S.E. Hinton

S.E. Hinton was not only 16 years old and still in high school when the Outsiders became a hit, but was also a girl.

I suppose that at some point a teacher could have dropped that nugget of information on me, but if so I don’t remember. Regardless, as a young girl who aspired to be a writer from the moment I was able to put a pen to paper, I wish someone had made sure I had know this about S.E. Hinton.

I hold the memories and the influence of the female writers from my childhood in very high regard. But I never had one who was not only a girl, but also a girl who was only a few short years older than me when she wrote her first and most famous book.

I excitedly told my kids about S.E. Hinton and her age, to which they were both fairly impressed. I vowed to dig my old copy of the Outsiders from its place in the garage (with all my own childhood book collection).

Later that night I was thinking about how nice it would’ve been to know more about S.E. Hinton when I was a girl, and it made me think of SheHeroes.  It’s the little moments like these that remind me why SheHeroes is here. To help shine a light on S.E. Hinton as well as the many other talented and inspiring girls and women like her, so that other girls will know them. So that other girls will benefit from just the simple knowledge that there are girls out there like them who have broken down boundaries and accomplished awesome things and been SheHeroic.  Or for girls like me. A girl who dreamed of being a writer and would’ve liked to have known S.E. Hinton’s was out there.

At least I know now, and more importantly so does my daughter.

That’s why I was so excited when I heard the amazing new program coming from the leading authority on all things STEM, The Women@NASA. For those of you who may not know the Women@NASA is a website that was created in response to the Executive Order, signed March 11, 2009, establishing the White House Council on Women and Girls. The site includes over 64 videos and essays from women who work at NASA in all of its many different departments as a way to help inspire girls and women.

Women@NASA has now created NASA G.I.R.L.S. (Girls Initiative and Relevance to Learning Science). What make this program so different from the many others I see in various communities (aside from the fact that it’s NASA) is that this program is VIRTUAL, making it possible for any girl with access to a computer to apply regardless of where she lives.

This virtual mentoring program uses video chat programs so that young girls can actually learn and interact with real women engineers, astronauts, scientists and a variety of other STEM positions at NASA.

Girls in grades 5^th through 8^th are eligible to apply for the program starting in May. The process will be open for 3 to 4 weeks with the inaugural class in July. Girls who get into the program will be assigned a random mentor (selection will be partly based on their application essays). During the 5-week course they will take part in a number of STEM related activities with one on one access t their personal mentor for the entire five weeks.

In the fall of 2012 NASA G.I.R.L.S. plans to team up with the Challenger Foundation and the Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capital to offer group mentoring.

We couldn’t be more excited to see all the amazing things NASA G.I.R.L.S. will help accomplish and how many girls they will end up inspiring!

If you know a SheHero who would be interested be sure and visit NASA G.I.R.L.S.  here.

This is Part 2 of Barbie: Bald, Presidential, and Armed. You can read Part 1 Here.

The truth is, my daughter has Barbies. Thanks to family and friends she has them. The last time she actually played with them they were flying to a different planet to retrieve some magic plants that could save the earth. I hesitate at the thought of putting the breaks on those games… the earth apparently depends on those Barbies. Thankfully, the Barbies she has are a racially diverse little group, but they are all still Barbies, that look like Barbies.

What message would it send to my daughter to have a bald Barbie? Not because she was sick, or had a friend who was sick. But simply because I want her to think bald can be beautiful. Her power does not lie within her hair, and frankly she doesn’t need to be sick to learn that. So yes, I would buy her a bald Barbie.

My daughter’s two favorite books are “If I Were President” and “Grace for President.” In fact she watched me week after week interview women in politics every week before I came to SheHeroes. She even attended events with me from time to time meeting some inspiring SheHeroes in politics. She knows she can be president if she wants to. But President Barbie could help show my daughter that a girl becoming President isn’t just something we talk about here in our house, it’s just as normal as a girl becoming a vet or getting married, or becoming a cowgirl….

Last but not least, the Katniss Everdeen Barbie. Yes, maybe from my grown up point of view a Katniss doll seems weird. Yes, marketing a Katniss doll does kind of defeat the message of the book. But I have never seen a doll as cool as Katniss. And if the blond, too skinny, make-up wearing Barbies that already haunt me here at home can save the earth and fight Aliens in their foofy dresses, imagine what my daughter would do with a Katniss doll?

Imagine.

Don’t get me wrong; I probably won’t buy any of these. My daughter does play with the Barbies she has from time to time, but frankly she just doesn’t really ask for new ones.

Honestly, when we speak out against Mattel and Barbie and the messages that Barbie sends to our young girls, we aren’t actually trying to bring down Barbie. The goal is to make them CHANGE the message. We want them to change the negative things Barbie symbolizes.

Since those are major changes that can’t be made overnight, maybe we should look at these dolls as something positive.  Maybe these dolls are a sign that things are changing. Are some companies, like Mattel starting to slowly (very slowly) realize that our voices are not getting quieter, they are getting louder? Are they starting to see that with every new baby girl born, another mother is also born? A mother who joins the growing number of voices protecting all girls and calling out companies who are trying to hurt them. Maybe, just maybe, someone is listening.

Maybe, this is how change starts. One bow and arrow carrying Barbie at a time…

Barbie.

Just simply saying the name stirs up a million different emotions from people. In fact you would be hard pressed to find a mother (or woman) that doesn’t have a strong opinion on the famous doll. Whether she’s fully supporting and filling her child’s toy box with all things Barbie or taking a firm and vocal stand against the doll that is notoriously a young girls first introduction into the world of damaging body ideals. Not that the debate is new. My own 90-year-old grandmother was banning Barbie from her own daughters long before it was fashionable for those very same reasons. The negative effects Barbie has had on generations of young girls is well researched and documented.

That’s not to say Barbie hasn’t made some attempts at answering to some of its criticism. In 1997, Mattel introduced Share a Smile Becky, a doll in a pink wheelchair. After a 17-year-old high school student, Kjersti Johnson, with cerebral palsy, pointed out that the doll would not fit into the elevator of Barbie’s $100 Dream House Mattel announced that it would redesign the house in the future to accommodate the doll.

Also in 1997 Barbie’s waist size increased and her breast sized decreased (though not by much) in an attempt to make Barbie appear more realistic. The attempt became meaningless in 2000 and 2004 when Barbie went back to her pre-1997 waist size.

Now, Barbie is taking a few more tries at pleasing those of us who have repeatedly called her out for the horrific body ideals being handed to our young girls.

First came the news of Bald Barbie (as yet to be named) the result of a Facebook campaign titled “Beautiful and Bald Barbie” initiated by Jane Bingham. Bingham is a young survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, who wanted to see Mattel create a doll for kids who have lost their hair due to cancer or other medical reasons. “One of the major reasons was to reduce the stigma for women and children who have hair loss — being not’ accepted to be able to go out in public without something covering their head, whether it be a wig or a scarf or that sort of thing,” Bingham says. “Their beauty and their self-worth is not dependent upon their hair.”

Though at first Mattel wasn’t interested, they have since announced that the doll will be produced in 2013. Sadly though it appears the doll will only be available in the US and Canada through the Children’s Hospital Association, CureSearch for Children’s Cancer and the National Alopecia Areata Foundation. Bingham is fighting to get the dolls sold in stores.

On the heels of this announcement Mattel also announced the release of the 2012 “I Can Be President doll”. Marie Wilson, founder of the Whitehouse Project, president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, co-creator (with Gloria Steinem) of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, and one of the most inspiring SheHeroes I’ve ever had the pleasure of interviewing has been called the “Mother of President Barbie.” But considering she has dedicated her life to inspiring girls and plans to see the actual first female President, the intentions behind President Barbie are as feminist as they come. For the plain simple fact, girls can’t be what they can’t see. “Well, it’s interesting. I initially approached Mattel to raise money. They wouldn’t give it to me so I said, ‘Maybe you should make that doll’s dream house a White House so she’ll have something to dream about. Make her the president.”

Then this week pictures of the new Katniss Everdeen doll were released. Katniss Everdeen is the lead character in the ever popular Hunger Games book series and movie. Though Mattel could have dressed Katniss in some of the high fashion gowns the character is stuck wearing in some parts of the books, they chose to keep her in her trademark jackets, pants, and armed with her bow and arrow. All key aspects to her character and how she’s dressed through the majority of the book and movie.

Some have complained because the doll has make-up. Some complain that marketing a Barbie doll after Katniss goes against the entire message of the books.

All those people making those claims, well they’re right.

But I can’t help but wonder, after reflecting on these new Barbies about a few things.

Read Part 2 here.

Here at SheHeroes we are proud to be a part of a new campaign put together by Inês Almeida founder of 7Wonderlicious. A Chain of Girl Goodness is working to mobilize many of out friends and fellow organizations in the world of empowering girls.

Chain of Girl Goodness, as described from their Press Release, is:

A coalition of all pro-girl businesses from around the world, a values driven online marketplace similar to etsy.com but focused on products for girls. A way to unleash the passion of many into one single global brand, the combined power of the global pro-girl community creating a real alternative to the “Pink, Pretty and Princess Industrial Complex”. Taking back girlhood, showcasing that girls are strong, daring, intelligent, adventurous, athletic, outspoken, leaders and fun.

SheHeroes is happy to be part of the Chain of Girl Goodness! Watch and share the following and become part of the girl revolution!

Mo Isom is an amazing SheHero and student at Louisiana State University (LSU). Mo is an amazing woman. Since becoming a student at LSU she has been an All American soccer player for LSU, homecoming queen, lost her father to suicide and almost lost her life to horrific car accident.

Mo hasn’t let tragedy bring her down. Now she is trying her best to become the first female football player for LSU, the top college team in the nation and the second women to play college football at all.

Sadly Mo didn’t make the football team as a kickoff specialist but said she was welcomed to try and make the team as a place-kicker in August. “We reviewed her skill, the things she can do and do well,” Miles said at his post practice press briefing. “We kind of felt like there’s four guys on the team right now that would be ahead of anybody that tried out the other day, including Mo. I told her that today. She’s going to go back and concentrate on extra points and field goals. She did not want to take that she couldn’t make the team. She said, ’Do I get another opportunity if I get a lot better.’ I said ‘Sure.’” Said LSU football coach Les Miles.

And try again is just what Mo intends to do.

Here is a SheHero who is not going to let circumstances stop her from going after what she wants. Instead of complaining that she’s not making the team, she’s getting out there and working on the things she needs to works on to get better.

Mo embodies the whole idea of never giving up, no matter what. Which is what makes her SheHero story such a perfect one. I can’t express how much I love sharing stories like Mo’s and encouraging you to share them with your SheHeroes.

Has there ever been something you had to keep trying for?

Check out Mo’s interview with Ellen here.