During the Society’s first two decades, members encouraged young women to pursue engineering by presenting information sessions and career slideshows, and awarding certificates of achievement to young women in science fairs and math classes — almost entirely at the high scho...

Letters reveal how an early SWE member tackled the duties of her unexpected presidency. By Troy Eller English, SWE Archivist President Mickey Gerla takes a rare break with her husband, Morty, at the 1957 SWE national convention in Houston. “I knew what I was getting i...

Members wrote and edited the Journal of the Society of Women Engineers and the SWE Newsletter during the organization’s first 25 years, but the task became untenable for volunteers as the Society’s news — and newsletter — ballooned in the 1970s. Hired in 1976, Editor Barbara...

Before SWE members shared their opinions in online message boards, comment sections, or on social media, they recorded those thoughts in letters to the editor of SWE’s publications. Although these letters often took the form of book recommendations and job postings in the So...

Women found many opportunities in engineering during the Second World War, but their prospects diminished afterward as U.S. servicemen returned to the country and the workforce. In the postwar years, women engineers had to hustle hard to find jobs in an employment climate su...

“I didn’t know girls could get jobs in engineering,” career guidance committee member Pat Zeman wrote in a 1972 letter to Chairman Betty Kimmel, recalling her inadequate career counseling in high school. The challenges of inspiring teenage girls to pursue engineering were st...

“Women representing the engineering profession must be of unquestionable professional status,” explained Past President Katharine Stinson in the November 1956 SWE Newsletter. “We are a minority group, and for many years to come, whether we like it or not, we must accept the ...

“Now I’ve heard everything! The excuse of ‘Danger’ for not hiring women in Chemical Engineering is one of the weakest I’ve heard to date,” Ruth Shafer, employment committee chairman, declared in a March 20, 1958, letter. Writing to Dorolyn Lines, Denver Section chairman, Sha...

Roberta Banaszak Gleiter, F.SWE, was one of the top students in her class when she graduated with a chemical engineering degree from Purdue in 1960, but faced such openly hostile recruiters that she gave up on her career. Instead, she stayed home and raised a family for near...

“We took ourselves very seriously,” Evelyn Jetter recalled of the Society’s founding members during the 1968 convention, “and kept looking around to see if anyone else also took us seriously.” One of the people who did, she explained, was Rodney Chipp, husband of the S...

“The two file cabinets don’t have room for a cockroach to take up residence, so some provision for future archives will eventually have to be made,” lamented archives committee chair Georgine Poultney in a 1977 letter. Established in 1953, the committee had done such a good ...

SWE President Lt. Col. Arminta Harness, F.SWE, was surprised, intrigued — and confused — in 1977 when she and leaders of other women’s organizations were invited to a White House briefing on the Panama Canal Treaties and a foreign policy meeting at the State Department. Poli...