LEGO launches long-overdue, all-female set featuring STEM careers

Attention, girls: In addition to finding your LEGO characters trapped in castles or modeling on catwalks, you can now let them try out a couple of careers. Specifically, astronomy, paleontology, and chemistry.

The company's new collection, called "Research Institute," is the brainchild of Swedish geochemist Ellen Kooijman, who submitted her designs to LEGO Ideas, an online forum in which fans vote for their favorite new LEGO sets. Winning entries go into production, meaning girls can soon purchase the sets, which add some much-needed diversity to the LEGO world, PolicyMic notes.

"As a female scientist, I had noticed two things about the available LEGO sets: A skewed male/female minifigure ratio, and a rather stereotypical representation of the available female figures," Kooijman wrote in a blog post. "It seemed logical that I would suggest a small set of female minifigures in interesting professions to make our LEGO city communities more diverse."

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Check out the winning designs below. --Sarah Eberspacher