Engineering is for You: Rewriting Who Belongs
For my Honors Capstone project, I wanted to highlight the gender gap in engineering. Throughout my collegiate career, I have been one of a handful of women in all my engineering classes and I will be the only woman graduating in my major, Computer Engineering, this spring. This experience has shown how such environments can allow sexism and misogyny to persist, emphasizing the need for greater representation and awareness.
This project is a downloadable ‘fortune teller,’ commonly played by children all around the world. Simply print and fold along the solid lines, as demonstrated below, and you’ve got an interactive piece that uses a familiar childhood game to spark reflection on gender equity and the experiences of women in engineering. The game mechanics are simple:
- The player picks one of the core engineering disciplines on the outside (e.g., “Civil Engineering”).
- The operator moves the fortune teller, opening it horizontally and vertically, for each letter of the chosen discipline (C-I-V-I-L-E-N-G-I-N-E-E-R-I-N-G = 16 movements).
- The player picks an engineering industry from the inner flaps.
- The operator moves the device that number of times. The player picks a final industry, and the operator lifts that flap to read the fun fact.
The goal of this project is to reach children across multiple communities and inspire them to pursue careers in engineering. By creating a simple toy, the project will appeal to young audiences and encourage them to share its message with others. It also aims to normalize the presence of women in engineering by introducing these ideas early and accessibly.
All statistics are derived from the following source.
Society of Women Engineers. “U.S. Employment.” SWE Research, 2025, https://swe.org/research/2025/us-employment/.
