AGAIN, they overwhelmingly don’t. Building sets like LEGO only market the “Build a mall! Build a coffee shop! Build Cinderella’s Romantic Castle!” sets to girls ([1](http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Girls-ByCategory)). They are encouraged to emulate cooking, cleaning, and childcare as play (a Google Image search for “girls toys” brings up hundreds of pictures of baby dolls, plus the old favorites like play vacuums and kitchens. By comparison, “boys toys” brings up Lincoln Logs, cars, and LEGOs – “building” things that might play into an interest in engineering). Then they enter school and are told to be quiet more than boys ([1](https://books.google.com/books?id=FYahCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=girls+told+to+be+quiet+more+than+boys&source=bl&ots=cfa37SXJJi&sig=fZfWjFtIIlgkS-t2w43vOwintmI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMIxZqI06aGxwIVkgySCh3TLQd1#v=onepage&q=girls%20told%20to%20be%20quiet%20more%20than%20boys&f=false)). Teachers give them lower grades ([1[/url], [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/upshot/how-elementary-school-teachers-biases-can-discourage-girls-from-math-and-science.html?_r=0]2](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/02/10/teacher_bias_in_math_new_study_finds_teachers_grade_boys_more_generously.html)). They are raised to believe that math and science are too hard for them. (I thought, thanks to a really discouraging Algebra 2 teacher, that I was bad at math until I was 18 or 19 years old.)
If they make it through ALL OF THAT with some shadow of an interest in STEM, they experience more imposter syndrome and as a result drop out (The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women:
Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention, Pauline Rose Clance & Suzanne Imes). Skewed numbers of women in STEM disciplines are brushed off as women just having different interests (like cooking, cleaning, teaching, childcare…aka those things we teach them how to pretend to do as children). Not to mention the everyday work sexism they face in fields were they are a very small minority.
Perhaps once you make it to college with an idea that you want to be an engineer, it’s easier. But don’t discount the OVERWHELMING influence that exists to discourage girls from even being interested in the first place.
I do feel bad about continuing to be off-topic. Sorry, OP! This will be my last post here.