Female engineers - what sparked your interest? Stats on gender distributions in FIRST

[ZipTie3182]

I'm writing a term paper for my AP US history class. It's on how society influences both girls and boys through gender stereotyping that surrounds us and how that causes hardship for both in school (especially boys) and limits possible paths later in life for both genders.

I was wondering if anyone has or knows a place to find a statistic of the gender distribution of boys and girls in FIRST, preferably separated by competition. I would be interested to see if there is an evident drop in participation in the higher grade competitions.

Also, if any female engineers could share how and why they perused engineering as a career that would be great. I'm looking for testimonials as part of my paper is interviewing those who are a minority in their fields and trying to coordinated that to society's perceptions on gender.

Thanks,
Anna