In an effort to curtail the falling numbers of young people choosing Information Technology as a career choice Martel, the toy manufacturer, has announced the Computer Engineer Barbie.

This doll comes complete with a binary t-shirt, black skinny pants, pink specs and a pink Bluetooth headset. Oh, and I forgot about the pink laptop. The clothing and packaging, Martel reckons, “were realistic and representative of a real computer engineer”. However, as much as this deserves the derision that it will no doubt get the line I particularly like in the Martel press release says “For girls to further experience the reality of being a computer engineer”

What! Have they completely lost all reason?

Most women I have worked with in IT, and a fine bunch of engineers they have been too, bear little resemblance to the image portrayed by Martel. I cannot remember a female IT engineer having a pink anything, or at least not at work, let alone, forsooth, a pink laptop!

Anyone bringing such a garish item into a room full of computer engineers is likely to be ridiculed for reason of galloping narcissism.

While the t-shirt may be reasonable assumption, one that sports binary and keyboard iconography would never pass muster because female engineers like their male counterparts often feel working with technology is enough of a burden without having to wear it too.

Anyway, the picture of the doll says it all, the bright happy image of the doll portrays a person who has never had to work with technology, never had to sit in front of a screen for hours on end trying to get the systems to perform the work that the various manufacturers of the plethora of hardware and software components have assured the customer it can do as easily as you or I would have breakfast but when it comes down to it has an extraordinary amount of difficulty just switching on.

No a more accurate portrayal would be a Barbie with a pensive, even slightly hunted expression, an off-the-shelf dark grey laptop, warm clothing to cope with the cool conditions in the air-conditioned server room and a mug of coffee. However, I suspect this would not bring the hordes of budding computer engineers into the profession.