“Petite Engineer Likes Math, Music”

Abstract

Christina Roberts explores the perception that NASA performed poorly in hiring women during the long civil rights era, arguing that that argument is based on low recruitment numbers by comparison with many other federal agencies. Others blame NASA’s poor recruitment efforts on an entrenched white male corporate culture that resisted hiring women and minorities into the early 1970s. While not denying NASA difficulties in the area, Roberts argues that what is missing from the historiography is a discussion of gender including NASA’s actual public outreach efforts for equal employment opportunity for women scientists and engineers. Roberts contends that during the late 1950s to mid-1960s NASA sought to transmit a message that women such as Nancy Grace Roman were welcome to apply and would attain professional science and engineering careers at NASA.