Allison J Parent wrote:

> 
> The underlying assumption hardware=male.  That's about predjudice too.
> I'm old enough to have heard a dept chairman suggesting nursing or
> 'other more suitable' career path.

OK Allison,
You woke me up on this one!
The DEC I joined in Jan of 69 was one where BRAINPOWER, not gender, was
the important thing.
I recall when Sharon Smith joined DEC. She was GREAT - and I am not just
saying that cause I am a smith!  Everyone of us viewed her as Design
Engineer Par Excellence.  At First, she had some fun getting folks to
realize a Woman could be a hardware person too!  We had plenty of women
who were system engineers and programmers - but few women doing hardware
design.  Sharon really made folks take notice. I recall that we had made
an effort to recruit women in the software side, manufacturing, and so
on but after talking Sharon into joining the 11 crew, we started serious
recruitment of women into all of the hardware groups- even 8
engineering!  KO used to say that we could not afford to exclude more
than half the brainpower of the world in our design crews!

Everything was not perfect however, even I noticed we did not have a
real gender mix of management but it was being worked.  Not just a rant
on this exercise of the mailing list - a comment on lessons learned and
not forgotten!