Just wondering Spaghetti, have you seen a lot of issues with women in engineering where you are? I am in one of the more male dominated engineering fields (civil), and I haven't seen much in the way of gender discrimination. I graduated in the late 1980s, and I encountered some age based discrimination - that went on for a while, since I looked younger than I was.
I understand why some folks see something wrong with the girl targeted STEM programs. It is fine to introduce girls (and boys too) to the many possible STEM careers, but there is no reason to force a certain group into certain careers. I'm not convinced that we need to "fix" this.
If certain folks - in this case females - don't want to go into certain STEM fields, don't force them to do so. We don't need every career choice to have employees who exactly reflect the percentages of gender, race, age, etc. that are in our society. If it turns out that way, great, but that shouldn't be the goal. Introducing students to all of the career possibilities, and then having them choose a path to a career which they like should be the goal.
