80s songs, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Volkswagen. All things I love involving some combination of angels, wings, and engineers. OK, I only picked the song, so I could get a provocative title.
While others are yammering on about racism by those who didn’t love the Coca-Cola ad, I’m tackling sexism with a tongue cramped from its position in my cheek.
Here’s the deal, Volkswagen is sexist. I just re-watched the best ad from the Super Bowl for confirmation. Yup, not a single winged engineer was female. In fact, most were gray-haired men with wire-rimmed glasses. Sociology lesson from Germany: a woman can run the strongest economy in Europe, but don’t let her touch one of our finely crafted automobiles.
Am I upset? Are you kidding me? I love both the engineer geeky male stereotype and breaking it. In fact, I was so excited that my profession got a nod, it wasn’t until I was on Facebook commenting on the ads and deciding on today’s blog post that I even recalled the lack of female engineers in the ad.
As far as the Coca-Cola commercial, I thought it was the typical multicultural pandering effort I expect from conglomerates and PBS kids’ shows. My reaction was meh. Rounding out my favorites were Radio Shack (see comment about the 80s above), Budweiser saluting the soldiers, and Intuit/Goldie Blox. Give a girl some Goldie Blox and the next thing you know, she’s building finely crafted automobiles.
Gretchen E K Engel 
Oh, heck yeah! I saw a preview of the commercial a couple days before the big game. The second it ended I turned to my husband and said, “Are you kidding me? There was not one female engineer in that ad. I can’t believe they did that.”
So I re-watched online to make sure. Nope. No women. So glad you posted about it.
Thank you Carla for noticing!! Yes, I had to comment on it! I loved the commercial, but as I was replaying it in my mind, I thought “something’s not right”. And to put it in perspective, Purdue University’s Chemical Engineering class of 1995 was 40% female.
I thought the add was hilarious. Especially the end with the rainbows. I had to explain that to my daughter. 😉
I didn’t notice the lack of female engineers. I did like the woman that slapped the guy in the elevator though.