9348: Community Minifigure Set

A new Lego education set was recently released, featuring members of the community.  Unlike most sets, it actually has an even number of men and women.

So this set is marketed as an educational product, displaying different roles that people play in the community.  Really glad that they included such an equal distribution of men and women.

In terms of gender roles, this is actually a really great set.  We have a female police officer and a female fire fighter, two roles that are generally seen as being male-dominated (fireman and policeman).  Even more interesting, the sole construction worker is also a woman.  Moving onto the hospital workers, the woman has a stethoscope and white scrubs, while the man does not.  Is the man a nurse, and the woman a doctor?  Again, defying gender roles.

So as you can see, this is a really great set if only because of the strides that the Lego Group made to defy gender roles.  A huge difference from the Paradisa and Belville sets of the 90s.

However, one interesting thing that I noticed (and this is probably due to the fact that female hair pieces block the other side of minifigure heads) is that every woman has an angry scowl on the reverse.

This is the only fault of the set, that it enforces the stereotype of women being upset and making such a face.  But I digress, this is one of the most progressive sets that the Lego Group has ever released.