A recent study looked at high school students and their interest in engineering as reported in the article How to turn a teen into an engineer (study) at DevBeat. High school students don't really know what engineering is or what engineers do. According to the article, high school students become very interested in the subject once the become aware of the cool things engineers design. In the study, boys are 60% more likely to consider engineering careers after learning about it, but only 35% of the girls are like to to consider engineering careers. It appears that girl perceive that engineering as non artistic or creative because it involve spreadsheets somehow. Girls are more interested in engineering projects that are have more of social impact like clean water projects in Africa.