As the science professions face a future marked by a widely predicted personnel shortage, attention has focused on the relative scarcity of women who choose technical fields as a vocation. An example of the recent upsurge of interest in this problem is the scheduling of a plenary talk on the subject at this week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (see story on page 1). One area of science that has been particularly slow in attracting women is aerospace, a field that "tends to be not as progressive in terms of women and their advancement" as other scientific disciplines, according to Sharon Langenbeck, division manager, advanced metals and ceramics, at Lockheed Corp.'s Burbank, Calif., facility. Among her co-workers, she says, "there are very, very few women at the Ph.D. level."
A woman who did manage to achieve a high level of success in the aerospace industry's ...
