Mar 08, 2014 08:58 AM EST By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Girls who play with Barbie dolls are more likely to have fewer career ambitions compared to boys, according to an Oregon State University and University of California study.

"This is one of the first studies to investigate how playing with sexualized dolls affects young girls, and also one of the first to look at the impact of such play on achievement or career aspirations, rather than body image," Eileen Zurbriggen at UC Santa Cruz and second author of the paper, said in a statement.

Aurora Sherman of Oregon State University said that Barbie and similar dolls also unnecessarily burden girls with the idea that thin is beautiful and promote unrealistic stereotypes of beauty.

For the study, the researchers asked 37 girls aged between 4 and 7  to play for five minutes with either a sexualized Doctor Barbie or Fashion Barbie doll, or with a more neutral Mrs. Potato Head doll. The girls were then shown photographs of 10 occupations and questioned about their aspirations regarding each.

The researchers found that the girls who played with a Barbie doll selected fewer occupations and those who were engaged with Mrs. Potato Head chose as many career options as boys.

"It's sobering that a few minutes of play with Barbie had an immediate impact on the number of careers that girls saw as possible for themselves" Zurbriggen said. "And it didn't matter whether Barbie was dressed as a model or as a pediatrician, suggesting that the doll's sexualized shape and appearance might trump whatever accessories are packaged with her."

The study titled 'Boys Can Be Anything: Effect of Barbie Play on Girls' Career Cognitions' is published in the journal Sex Roles.

Now manufacturers are coming up with creative toys for girls to make them think out of the box.

Goldiebox founder Debbie Sterling, a 30-year-old Stanford engineering grad, was motivated to produce toys for girls that offered more options than normally found in the Barbie world. That's when she came up with the strong, smart, engineer-focused toys.

"In our culture, the sad truth is that math and science and engineering is a boys' club, and it starts at such a young age," Sterling said. "There's Bob the Builder, Bill Nye the Science Guy and all these other boy geniuses, but I wanted a role model, a strong character girls can relate to," abc reports.

GoldieBlox has since become more popular with girls and is crushing the typical female stereotypes.

 "Girls love it. They are building all kinds of cool things with it," Sterling said.

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