Girls aren't even enrolling in Engineering!

I was reading over at http://www.nerdgirlarmy.com that women accounted for only 12.7% of enrollments in engineering in Australia in 2007. The proportion of girls doing engineering has been dropping for several years now and this really worries me!

As a professional engineer, I can regale you with difficulties I have faced. But in the long run, I have clearly not found anything insurmountable, as I'm still working as an engineer.

I can (and do) extoll the virtues of engineering to friends, family, strangers on the street and, most importantly, school students. But despite many such initiatives, we seem to be going backwards. I am starting to think that we haven't defined the problem properly and until we do all our solutions are going to be ineffective.

The real question isn't "why did I choose engineering?" but "why DIDN'T girls choose it?". Of course, how we go about answering that question is a problem of it's own. (But I for one haven't given up)