All Rise for the Steno Barbie: A Dream Career

Barbie’s creator was a stenographer, yet with over 200 Barbie careers, Stenographer isn’t one of them.

A petition by stenographers is seeking to change that. There are over 28,000 stenographers currently employed in the United States. 90.2% of all stenographers are women, while 9.8% are men. There is a worsening crisis of a shortage of court reporters in the United States.

Simply put, a stenographer is someone who types what people say. A stenographer is a person trained to type or write in shorthand methods, enabling them to write as quickly as people speak. Stenographers can create lasting documentation of court and deposition proceedings. Also called Court Reporters, they are officers of the court with the authority to administer an oath.

Without court reporters, justice in America as we know it would come to a screeching halt, and be replaced with a tyrannical rule of government where the government would own the recordings and those with power and wealth can control the record. An example of the coming injustice is seen in the Waukesha Parade Massacre case of Darrell Brooks, where court recordings were conveniently lost, when it became clear that the court could have been culpable in the wrongful death and massacre of 6 people and injuring 62 others.

The fact is that stenographers are capable of making more money than Judges, Doctors, Lawyers, Neurosurgeons, and the CEO’s of companies and equity firms that are, out of envy and greed, trying to keep women from earning a high income.

Where courts have previously relegated their official court reporters to part-time status with no benefits, they’re now offering huge incentives to attract them.

In 2019, Mattel’s Barbie Career of the Year was the Barbie Judge Doll.

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“The company chose a judge as its Career of the Year doll after learning that only 33% of sitting US state judges are women, Lisa McKnight, senior vice president and global brand general manager of Barbie, told USA TODAY.”

“Judge Barbie is available in a variety of different skin tones and hairstyles. She comes with a customary black robe and a lacy collar that looks strikingly similar to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s.”

Even the infamous “Judge Judy,” Judge Judy Sheindlin, insisted on having a human Court Reporter (aka Stenographer) on the cast of her new show, Judy Justice. Whitney Kumar was not only cast as the stenographer on the show, she is a real, live, certified California Certified Shorthand Reporter. Judge Judy wanted “more elements to work with” and saw an opportunity with adding a court reporter who would share her realtime output screen with the world and readback testimony upon the Judge’s request, as many as three times per show, just as a judge would do in the real world. A stenographer is such a valuable role in every courtroom, ensuring the protection of the record and ultimately justice in America.

Judges always say, “The court reporter is the most important person in the room.” If that is the case, then there should be a Steno Barbie. But why, you ask, is a stenographer that important? Well, simply put, our record transcends the courtroom, where a court of appeal can overturn the judge’s decision. Without a transcript, a case has no chance at winning an appeal. Successful lawyers talk about trying their case to the Court of Appeals for a reason, because if they lose in the lower court, they have one more shot at winning in the COA. The court reporter has powers beyond that of a judge, in that a judge cannot order the court reporter to change the record. The court reporter is granted special powers to protect the record, even from judges who might attempt to control and influence the record. The court reporter is the only one in the courtroom who does not have to follow the judge’s orders, and instead protect the record with their own jurisdictional powers to do so. That is what makes the court reporter the most important person in the courtroom.

Barbie’s over 200 career choices are broken down into 11 categories, but it wouldn’t be hard to place a Steno Barbie into either the Public Service or Business categories, or both, one for court officials and one for freelance deposition court reporters and CART/captioners. And then there’s the choice of which method, steno or voice, or both.

I would propose that, like the Barbie Judge with a cause, we would have the Steno Barbie partner with Project Steno to raise funds to help promote careers & training in stenographic programs.

Please sign the petition today, and be a part of a movement to protect the record and ensure justice in our American courtrooms.