Expanding Horizons for Women : Girls Consider the Options for Careers

“Ladies, we need it quiet in here.”

The monitor’s warning rescued Orange County Superior Court Judge Judith Ryan, who had momentarily lost her audience. Keynote speaker for Thursday’s “Expanding Your Horizons: Women in Science and Mathematics” conference at UC Irvine, Ryan was discussing career options for women. In the audience of 350, feet had started wiggling, notes were being passed and whispering had grown to a quiet roar.

Perhaps it was inevitable. In an effort to explain future work conditions, Ryan had been detailing the litigation and rights women have won since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But her listeners may not have understood the word “litigant.” Moreover, to them, this was prehistory. Most hadn’t been born until after 1970.

The restlessness was shown by the younger half of the 750 Orange County junior and senior high school students who attended the seventh annual career conference. It didn’t seem to faze Ryan, the other 14 women speakers or the conference organizers. “Considering their age and numbers, it’s to be expected,” explained Carol Stanley, senior academic counselor for UCI’s program in social ecology and one of the conference coordinators. “Every year we have to tell them once or twice to knock it off.”

Familiarization Goal

One of the conference’s goals is to familiarize students with a college atmosphere, she said. Another is to encourage them to identify with female professionals in atypical jobs simply by seeing women with titles generally associated with men. For example, among the other speakers were a psychologist, a criminalist, a park ranger, a stockbroker and the assistant supervisor of the UCI nuclear reactor facility.

Stanley said she hopes that watching these professionals and hearing their stories will encourage the young women to be less awed by careers based on math or science, to keep their career options open and to become aware of problems they may face. She be lieves those messages get through, despite waning student attention.

The first math-science career conference for girls 12 to 18 years old was held in 1976 at Mills College in Oakland by the Math-Science Network, a group of educators, scientists, parents and civic leaders concerned about the under-representation of women in math and science courses and careers. Now the Network claims 1,200 members nationwide, and every spring more than 70 such conferences are held across the country. The local conference is sponsored by UCI, the American Assn. of University Women and Orange Coast College.

Two years ago, the popular conference attracted 2,800 participants to UCI. They were too many, said Stanley, and the conference was scaled down.

Labor trends indicate young women can now expect to work full time as adults. Most are still entering female-dominated professions such as secretary, elementary school teacher and nurse. But with higher levels of education, more women are expected to enter the increasing number of better-paying jobs in science and technology, according to Alta Yetter, a labor market analyst for the California Employment Development Department in Santa Ana.

The University of California requires at least four years of math and science and the state college system at least two years, Stanley said. “If kids get on a non-college bound track or don’t take the type of math or science the colleges and universities require, they’re basically closing the doors.”

Recognizing their personal stories may not apply to young women today, some speakers described career struggles marked by discouragement and discrimination. Some told of surprising career changes, others of finding a career after raising children.

Judge Ryan told the girls no one in her family had ever attended college. Twenty-five years ago, her high school counselors suggested if she went to college she should pursue teaching, nursing or, as a long shot, journalism. But she changed her college major from journalism to political science after being inspired by her law student boyfriend to become a lawyer herself. “My father thought I was crazy. He said, ‘Women aren’t lawyers.’ ”

Now, she said, women make up 15% of the Orange County judiciary. Showing how times have changed, she cited the achievements of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro and astronaut Sally Ride as well as those of women presidents of banks, publishing houses and other businesses.

Nevertheless, there are practical problems, she pointed out. In Orange County, women constitute 42% of the work force. Yet the majority are in clerical jobs, and there is enough child care for only a quarter of them, said Ryan, the mother of six.

Moreover, discrimination and stereotypes still exist, she told them. Five years ago, the Orange County office of the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing was receiving 30 calls a week from employers seeking to fire pregnant women and wondering whether it was legal, she said.

The blonde, stylish Ryan said she was once asked if she sang in a choir when she took her judicial robes to the dry cleaner. She replied that she worked in the courts. The cleaner then asked whether she was the clerk. Another time, she went to a restaurant to meet a friend who had made reservations in her name. Told there was no Ryan on the list, she asked them to check twice. Finally, the maitre d’ told her: “I’m sorry, the only Ryan we have is Judge Ryan.”

She told the girls she has no career regrets. But she said she set her path without considering all her options. “You have opportunities girls your age didn’t have 25 years ago. Now is the time to start exploring. You can’t start too soon.”

Changed Mind

Following her talk, the students asked mainly personal questions. One girl wanted to know whether Ryan’s father had changed his mind. “He was in the front row when I was sworn in, so I think he’s proud now,” Ryan said. Another asked how her husband, a lawyer, feels about her career. No problems there, Ryan replied.

Later, a couple of girls said Ryan’s stories had surprised them. “I thought discrimination was in the dark ages,” said Sabrina Bowers, 13, of San Juan Capistrano. She said she wants to be a journalist. “I didn’t know it was still happening. I thought we were over that,” echoed Helke Farin, 13, of Huntington Beach. A straight-A student, she said she was inspired by her older brother, a premed student, to prepare for a career in medicine.

Some high-achieving students were selected by teachers and administrators to attend the conference. However, 90 spaces were reserved for young women whose teachers feel they need to be motivated to attend college, said Stanley.

Accompanied by a few teachers, the girls broke off into groups of a dozen to attend workshops following Ryan’s talk. Some toured UCI’s nuclear reactor facility and listened to Pat Rogers, a radio chemist and assistant supervisor of the facility.

Rogers, 43, said she had felt like a failure for 15 years after she dropped out of college to marry and have children. When she returned, she planned to major in music. But to fill out her schedule, she took an organic chemistry course that proved to be challenging and interesting enough to prompt her to eventually change her major. She is now completing her Ph.D. in radiochemistry.

‘I Was Prepared’

Rogers said she is grateful that she had been forced to take science and math courses in her private high school. “I was prepared. It allowed me to make changes.” Students now generally have more choices in which and how many math and science courses they take, she said. Only the mature ones or those whose parents force them will be equally prepared, she suggested.

Some students in her workshop said they had no career plans. Four cited possible occupations in nursing, two in interior decorating, and others said they were interested in police work, medicine, business, veterinary medicine and computers.

From Rogers, they learned that UCI scientists use the rays given off by various elements to photograph living brains, determine mercury levels in open ocean fish and help archeologists piece together ancient statues. They assist criminologists by radiating and examining hair and fingernail samples for evidence of foul play, she said. During a 1977 reinvestigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, she said, scientists used the UCI nuclear reactor to determine that the bullet fragments in his body matched those assertedly found in the possession of Lee Harvey Oswald, who was alleged to have been the assassin.

Going into the facility, the girls and their teachers passed a control desk with a joke sign: “Achtung! Das machine is nacht fur gefingerpoken . . .” Inside, they leaned over the rails around UCI’s oval “swimming pool reactor” and peered 25 feet down through the water to the eerie blue glow made by the nuclear reactor.

Discouraged by Counselor

“I’d never seen one before. I never realized they could do that,” said Corina Durrago, a student teacher of chemistry who was accompanying junior high students. Women chemistry students are still a minority, said Durrago. Six years ago, when she was an undergraduate at UCLA, she said a counselor discouraged her from continuing with chemistry by saying the closest she would ever get to graduate school would be if she put her husband through. Now she holds a master’s degree in chemistry.

“I’m concerned that they hear about (female) math anxiety, and then they become afraid,” said Karin Westerling, a conference proctor, UCI biology student and member of AAUW. “At this age, they want to have boyfriends and not be weird.”

When she was in high school, park ranger Marlene Brajdic said she was a cheerleader and aspired to be a stewardess. “It was important to belong. I never imagined myself in the forest chopping wood.” She said her father encouraged her to postpone her career decision until after college. At Saddleback College, she took a field geology class and spoke with a ranger who motivated her to continue her studies at UC Davis. Now she works for the Orange County Environmental Management Agency as a park ranger at Arroyo Trabuco, the wilderness addition to O’Neill Regional Park northeast of El Toro. When Brajdic lectures, she encourages the audience to touch the taxidermied animals, reptiles and birds she brings along. Interestingly, the approach is often more effective when the girls (or women) are separated from the boys (or men), she said. “If you take a snake in a mixed group, the men will step forward to handle it and coax the women to come forward,” she said. But if women are alone, “their curiosity will affect them and they’ll come through,” she said.

Lack of Motivation

Fewer women are in math- and science-related professions because they were not motivated as girls, said Pat Huck, now a criminalist with the Orange County Sheriff’s Crime Lab, where half the criminalists are women. As a result, she said: “A lot of women don’t go looking for opportunities. That’s why they don’t get them.”

Huck, a “typical bookworm” in high school, said she has never experienced discrimination. However, she said she dropped early plans to become an engineer because as one of five women students in a department of 5,000 majors, she felt too uncomfortable.

She said her message to the girls was to obtain a strong background in communication skills as well as math, science and computers. When she applied for her current job, the procedure involved two essay questions: 1) Why do you want to be a criminalist and 2) What is the most complicated problem you’ve ever solved?

Additionally, she said, criminalists must often testify in court and “have to communicate.”

Huck said the girls asked her job-related questions such as, “How long after a person dies can you find drugs in the body?”

In another workshop, one junior high student persistently questioned Laurel Sternberg, a former nurse turned stockbroker, about her job. After Sternberg had tried to explain bonds, options and commodities, the girl asked: “So, it’s like loaning money, or what?” An hour later, she asked: “I’m still not clear. Do people invest in you or your company, or what?” If Sternberg’s explanation was beyond them, her fast-paced tips for success in sales got their attention. She advised: Be organized; be willing to contact a lot of people; be deliberate in choosing friends; study finance if you want but attend a good school such as UCLA or USC for connections; make “excellence” a way of life and don’t wait for Prince Charming.

‘High-Achiever’ Impact

Raised in a lower-middle-class family, Sternberg said she was encouraged to ask no more from life than a secure job and a nice guy who wouldn’t abuse her. She enrolled in UCI but was more interested in parties and quit before she was “kicked out.”

Eventually, she worked her way through nursing school. As a nurse she made $60,000 a year, working 68 hours a week. But: “I saw people die, and I put them through painful procedures. How much gore and heartbreak can you put up with?”

Then, she said, she met some “high achievers” who were making money without suffering. “I finally got tired of waiting for Prince Charming to put me in a castle in Bel-Air. I said, ‘I’ve got to learn how to do it myself.’ ” Three years after becoming a stockbroker for a firm on the New York Stock Exchange, she now works 50 hours a week. And she makes six figures a year.

That revelation elicited a collective gasp from the group. Afterward, an adviser commented: “I think we were more interested than the kids.”