Why so few women, still?

"Why are there so few women in engineering?" queried the e-mail from a male engineering student. As I listed the reasons put forth by various experts, the thought occurred to me: We\´ve been working on this issue for 50 years now. If we really knew the answer, we would have solved it already. I\´ve read lots of research on this topic and conducted many recruitment and outreach programs over the years to try to interest more women in studying engineering, and the conclusion I\´ve reached is what I call "Jill\´s Theory": Engineering in the United States suffers from a huge image problem.