A League of Extraordinary Women

There's a program underway, driven by a nationwide coalition of professional engineering societies, that hopes to attract girls to engineering by making them aware of the importance of engineering in everyday life.

Only 23 percent of all engineering graduates are women, a much smaller percentage than those in medicine and law. In part, girls don't understand the profession and think of engineering as boring. (What is engineering?) Furthermore, they're looking to work in a field they feel has more potential to change society.

Another crucial reason girls shun engineering is because they're not encouraged to think about it. Teachers, parents, and counselors "haven't got a clue what engineering is about." As a result, when most girls choose the profession, it's because, in part, they already know someone in it. The project seeks to attract girls to engineering who don't have that advantage.

Read the full article in IEEE Spectrum.