[EricVanWyk]

On the team I mentored in college, we had a trio of young women who ruled supreme. Simply put, they were the most motivated students we had. I'm reasonably confident that if I had told them they couldn't make the robot fly, they would have proven me wrong. Over the years the team had between 4 and 7 students total.

On the team I participated in during highschool, there was a much wider spread in the responsibilities of the females. We had upwards of 50 students total, so the statistics averaged out a bit. We had a lot of strong young women that did everything anyone else did. Unfortunately, we had a few other girls who brought stereotypes with them.

There are sexist people out there that will attempt to force young women to be girls. Hopefully, they are a dying breed. However, they are not 100% of the problem; It is the burden of young women everywhere to not be sexist against themselves. A few refrains of "I'm just a girl" and it becomes true.

I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of really smart/capable/fantastic women engineers. It is clear to me that gender doesn't play into engineering capability, only perceived capability.