Software engineering is clearly engineering. The main difference is simply that in the software world, engineers often report directly to people who aren't engineers. This basically never happens in other fields - e.g. all buildings, tunnels, railways etc are built by dedicated engineering firms founded and run by more engineers. The exception in software is of course the tech industry, which routinely pulls off engineering marvels.

Projects usually go wrong, or are "late" (relative to estimates engineers didn't want to give in the first place), when they're being closely controlled by people who are not engineers. The recent article on Berlin's new airport being a case in point, where the politicians tried to double its size after it started being constructed and the entire project collapsed in a heap.

Now imagine that happening all the time, every day. That's the enterprise software world.