Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=216812
Story Retrieval Date: 5/19/2013 11:52:05 AM CST
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Srushti Shah/Medill

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, an annual event at Argonne National Laboratory, encourages more girls to become scientists and engineers.


Building a world with more women engineers

by Srushti Shah
Feb 26, 2013


Make more girls engineers

Srushti Shah/Medill

The number of girls who become engineers remains very low as compared to boys. But the gap can be bridged by encouraging more girls to become scientists and engineers.

Men outnumber women engineers more than a four to one ratio. Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day is one of the initiatives by Argonne National Laboratory to close the gap between male and female engineers and scientists.

Institutions such as Argonne, near Lemont, are making conscious efforts to push more girls towards STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers. Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day is a part of this effort.

The recent event attracted about 80 girls from schools in the Chicagoland area. The girls toured the lab, talked to mentors and guest speakers and took a look at science and engineering experiments, with a purpose of getting more familiar with science, and seriously think of it as a career option.