"What is an atom made of?" asks engineer Stefan Wilke. "Does anyone know?" 52-year-old Wilke, with gray curls and rimless glasses, kneads his hands together and gives the group gathered around him an encouraging smile.

But the 17 girls Wilke is taking on a tour of the German Electron Synchrotron -- commonly known by its acronym DESY -- in Hamburg, remain shyly quiet. "Come on, give it a go!" the engineer urges, then offers a little hint: "One of the parts that make up atoms are ele…"

"Electrons!" calls out one of the students.

"Yes!" Wilke cheers. "That's right! Electrons! Excellent work! Great!"

The whole morning at DESY has gone more or less in this vein, with the approximately 200 female school students who have come here to attend an "Action Day for Girls" showered with encouragement and attention.

First there were the tote bags full of informational material and gifts. Then business director Christian Scherf, 49, addressed the Action Day's attendees, telling them he was "incredibly glad that so many girls are interested in DESY." Next, the students were given the opportunity to talk to role models, in the form of female network administrators, the facility's radiation safety officer and other female DESY employees, who met with the girls to discuss career opportunities and ways to balance family and professional life.

Once the girls' questions were answered, they were divided into small groups. One of these went with Wilke, who explained that he would be giving them a tour that would include getting an up-close look at the particle accelerator and other research equipment. "That's something you don't get to see often," he enthused. "It'll be great."

DESY employees are making every effort on this Action Day to get female students excited about jobs in math, computer science, natural sciences and technology. One issue at stake here is gender equality. Another is Germany's strength as a seat of industry and trade.

"We Need You"

The country is growing increasingly concerned about shortages of scientists and skilled workers, and immigration alone won't be enough to successfully combat the problem in the long term. Sparking interest among more girls and women in technology-related jobs -- often referred to as the STEM fields -- will also be essential. Germany currently has a shortage of 36,000 engineers, warns the Association of German Engineers.

"We need you," DESY director Scherf appealed to the teenage girls during his welcome speech in the auditorium. "We won't manage with just the men. This is your chance!"

Such entreaties from managers, job placement officers and equal opportunity commissioners have generally seemed to fall on deaf ears. For years, Germany has conducted well over 1,000 initiatives and events aimed at wooing young women into science and technology jobs. Yet too many of them still wind up in office jobs, educational positions or working within the service industry.

The proportion of women in science and technology fields has risen considerably since the 1970s, but in the last 10 to 15 years that trend has started to stall. Only one in 10 first-year electrical engineering students since 2000 has been a woman. The proportion of women in engineering as a whole has stagnated at around 20 percent.

Things look no better in the automotive industry and other companies that provide professional training in science and technology fields. Often it's only men running the technical side of things, while women can be found in office jobs or in sales. The only woman Wilke's young visitors encounter in the first 30 minutes of their tour is a cleaning woman with a mop and bucket.

Vain Attempts

Yet government and businesses alike have tried everything they can. There have been multi-day technology camps, competitions for hobby inventors and initiatives that go by names such as "Let's MINT," "Miss MINT" or "MINTeinander" -- "MINT" being the German acronym for "math, computer science, natural sciences and technology." There have been glossy brochures with pictures of attractive female computer scientists and mechanical engineers, to counteract the stereotype that only mousy women work in technology professions. There have been "Women MINT Slams" -- modeled on poetry slams -- at which female scientists give cool presentations on the mechanics of hybrid cars and other ultra-modern technology.

Yet none of it seems to have stuck. "Events like Girls' Days especially have not proven effective," says Oliver Koppel from the Cologne Institute for Economic Research.

Wilke's group has arrived at a room the size of a gymnasium, where men with mugs of coffee sit in front of computer screens, making sure everything runs smoothly with the particle accelerator. The computers bear women's names, such as Doris and Petra. A scarf bearing the slogan of Hamburg soccer team HSV hangs in the back of the room. Flyers from pizza delivery services lie on a shelf.

"Are there actually any women here?" one of the girls wants to know. A bearded employee answers with a smile. "Of course! And they absolutely have equal rights!" he assures her. In fact, a female technician does walk through the room shortly afterward.

The proportion of women in technical professions at DESY is comparatively low, at 15.4 percent, while the proportion in scientific positions is somewhat better, at 20.6 percent, according to a report by the center's equal opportunity commissioners. Still, far more women can be found in the synchrotron's administration, where the proportion of female employees is 45.7 percent.

Annika, one of the students in Wilke's group, says she can't quite imagine working with so many men. This morning, a DESY IT trainee Annika described being the only girl in her vocational school class -- with 27 boys. "Pretty crazy," says 17-year-old Annika, who plans to "look into everything" when it comes to career options.

"I could also imagine doing something with animals," she says. "Veterinary medicine would be great, for example." It's a subject that ranks among the favorites with young women, along with social education and Romance languages.

Social Conditioning

But others are less ambitious. Anja Huth, spokeswoman for Germany's Federal Employment Agency, believes one problem is that too many young women take an interest in what she calls "dead-end fields of study and professions." Often, she says, the jobs in question offer below average pay, hold little opportunity for advancement or are in decreasing demand due to demographic and technological shifts. These, too, are reasons why it is important to attract more women into science and technology professions, Huth says.

In theory, at least, the odds of achieving that goal don't look so bad. Researchers have found the same results again and again -- from the time they're born, girls are in principle just as interested in technology as boys are. Girls are also just as good as boys at math and physics. They're just a little more hesitant in these fields -- and are conditioned from the time they're young, by the people around them and by the media, to see cars, robots and hard drives as things that are more for boys than for them.

"Even with the best of initiatives, you're going to have a hard time getting these gender clichés out of people's heads," says Jutta Dalhoff, director of the Center of Excellence Women and Science (CEWS). It would likely be just as futile to bring testosterone-driven teenaged boys to a beauty salon for an afternoon in the hope of inspiring them to become manicurists.

The way to increase the proportion of women in science and technology fields, Dalhoff suggests, is by starting earlier. A study titled "Women in MINT Professions," which CEWS prepared for Germany's Joint Science Conference (GWK), agrees that it's important to reach girls "before gender stereotypes about attributes and expected abilities become ingrained."

Initiatives such as the "House of Little Researchers" or "The Sandbox Engineers" have taken the study's advice to heart, giving three-year-old girls metal construction sets or electronics experiment kits to play with instead of dolls and toy kitchens.

Changing Media Stereotypes

Another initiative takes a creative approach to getting girls interested in jobs as lathe operators or other technical positions. A project called MINTiFF, run by Berlin's Technical University with funding from the German government and the European Union, is fighting the gender clichés widespread in the media.

The project takes issue with the way the female protagonists of TV movies, series and soap operas most often work in the media or as teachers or florists. According to MINTiFF, the time is ripe for TV heroines who are "charismatic female characters" working in scientific professions. This, the project suggests, could trigger "a run on the corresponding fields of study."