Historic Rejection Letters to Women Engineers

[pokerfan]

The Society of Women Engineers recently shared a trove of astonishing documents from the group’s archives. They’re letters, loads of them, all directed at women engineering students who had contacted various universities about their interest in connecting with other women studying engineering.

Lou Alta Melton and Hilda Counts, both students at the University of Colorado in 1919, were trying to start their own professional society. Their letters—and the many responses they received—are part of the Society of Women Engineers sprawling archives, which are housed at Wayne State University in Detroit.

“We have not now, have never had, and do not expect to have in the near future, any women students registered in our engineering department,” Thorndike Saville, and an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, wrote in his reply to Melton. He signed it, “Yours very truly.”

“We do not permit women to register in the Engineering School under present regulations,” wrote William Mott, the dean of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, which would later merge with the Mellon Institute to become Carnegie Mellon.

More: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/historic-rejection-letters-to-women-engineers/527793

[dlk]

1. The Loss of Innovation and Expertise

Think of all the creative energy, innovation and accomplishment we've all lost due to sexism through the ages.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Mi cousin Liliana

Only female graduate, University of La Salle, industrial engineering, class of '85

[barbtries]

5. wow.

even in 1985. kudos to her

[zipplewrath]

6. Class of '82

84 graduates in Aero/Astro engineering. 4 women.
Ratio in the school in general was like 3 to 1.

[barbtries]

9. kudos to you!

i have to admit i never considered becoming an engineer, but then i don't know if i would have even if i was male. i did pump gas in the early 70's at 2 gas stations where i was the first female gas station attendant to work there or ever serve at least 99.9% of my customers.

[Xipe Totec]

10. ++ nt

[babylonsister]

8. Yay! Props to her, thanks for sharing. nt

[Beartracks]

13. THAT is an awesome photo!

[frogmarch]

3. I got one like that

from Western New Mexico University in Silver City in the early 1960s. I had written to ask what programs the university offered related to forestry, mentioning I wanted to be a forest ranger.

I was told that forestry was for men and advised to aim for getting a job as a forest service secretary, or marry a forest ranger.

[Beartracks]

12. Wow, I didn't realize "marry a forest ranger" was a career choice!

====================

[Turbineguy]

4. As I like to say on board ships....

"A Woman can lift a 4-1/2 ton piston just as well as a Man can."

[csziggy]

18. LOL! I used to tell girls that training horses was easier for women

Because men thought they could out muscle a half ton animal while women knew they couldn't. So women tend to try to out think the horses and use leverage when necessary - and the men are still out there fighting with them!

[Turbineguy]

19. That's it.

[exboyfil]

7. My daughter Class of 2016 B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Her ME class was about 12% women. Things are much better, but women are still underrepresented. I will say she was supported by the public school system and her university. She had a number of mentors that worked with her - most of them men. Her biggest issue was with her female freshman adviser who tried to keep her out of the Sophomore design class her first semester because of her age and sex (the adviser's stated reason was being around so many older boys). I was not there, but this is what my daughter told me.

She graduated Magna Cum Laude in two years after high school. It was definitely the right thing to place her in that class.

[Xipe Totec]

11. Watching the series Genius right now. Einstein's life

Sad how he didn't give due credit to his first wife, who proofread his work.

Genius, yes.

Asshole, also.

[Duppers]

15. And Mileva scored higher on the university entrance exams

than Albert did. AND....

"It was Marić who was his intellectual sparring partner as he developed his earliest ideas of what would become Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Why do most people not know this? Well, likely because of the times, Marić was never cited in any of Einstein's papers despite their personal letters confirming that she read and proofed many of his early drafts. And as his scientific reputation accelerated, an initially pregnant-out-of-wedlock Marić was relegated to the traditional role of housekeeper and mother after they wed in 1903."

More: http://www.blastr.com/2017-5-8/national-geographic-genius-samantha-colley-interview

[SunSeeker]

16. Yep. She was a genius herself. nt

[SCantiGOP]

20. My wife and I have two episodes left

I figured someone would bring up the Einsteins.
Great comparison between them
and the Curies.

[murielm99]

14. I remember following the story of an acquaintance of mine

from the 1960's. She graduated with a degree in engineering. I don't remember what kind of engineering.

She could not get a job. One firm told her that they remembered her from the time she was a little girl. They had known her father, who was also an engineer. They did not feel comfortable hiring someone they had known as a little girl.

She went back to school. The school she attended was a very posh, well-known secretarial school. After she graduated, she was hired by an engineering firm as a secretary. Eventually, she got her engineering job, by entering through the back door as a secretary.

[SunSeeker]

17. Yup. Sandra Day O'Connor had a similar experience after Stanford law school.

After graduation from law school, at least forty law firms refused to interview her for a position as an attorney because she was a woman.[17] She eventually found employment as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California, after she offered to work for no salary and without an office, sharing space with a secretary.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Day_O%27Connor