November 24, 2004 11:28 AM

Engineering Women
Posted by Diane Danielsonat 11:28 AM

Did you prefer Legos and Erector Sets to Barbies when you were younger? Or perhaps you coveted your brother's Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs? Maybe now's the time to rediscover your inner engineer. At least that's what the founders of the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project hope.

Women make up 46 percent of the workforce in the United States yet hold only 12 percent of the jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math. Hoping to attract more women to careers in engineering, a coalition of engineering associations and societies, together with the WGBH-TV Educational Foundation in Boston, have established the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project.

The project will kick off with a book, expected to be published in the fall of 2005, that focuses on what women engineers from around the world have contributed to the development of innovative technologies. The book's topic is clear from its title: Women Engineers: Extraordinary Stories of How They Changed Our World.

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