When Dawn Bonfield, the former chief executive of the Women's Engineering Society, ran a stand recently at a big military airshow, she was in for a shock.
There were around 900 Brownies amongst the crowd and Ms Bonfield recounts, "I'm saying to all these girls, 'Do you know about engineering, would you like to be an engineer, have you thought about engineering?'
"And in the whole day... probably five or six of them said yes. Every other one said no, just straight out no."
What surprised her most, she says, is that it wasn't that these eight and nine-year-old girls didn't know what engineering was. Simply that they had already switched off.
"So how much work does it take to change that?" asks Ms Bonfield. "I mean it's huge."
This is a very interesting observation by Dawn Bonfield, former CEO of WES.
It is a pity that the numbers were so low but I think that this emphasises the point that more needs to be done in terms of engaging schools, parents and teachers in addition to utilising social media in order to reach younger audiences. I do believe that this will be the turning point and will help us to achieve the changes that we want to see.
Addressing the 'pink aisle' and altering perceptions from a much younger age are also key.
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What else could be done?
