Believe It or Not: The Challenges Facing One Professional Woman a Half Century Ago

In 1963, a woman accepting a paid position—even a teaching position in a university engineering department—is thought to bring shame on her family. An upper middle-class wife was supposed to be supported, if not by her husband, then by her family. .

But Claude Gruen, husband of author Nina Jaffe Gruen, sees her as a partner professional..

Facing 160 disrespectful male students in a department with no full-time female faculty members is just the beginning of Nina’s foray into an exclusively male professional world—and she learned a lot about how to be taken seriously.

With great humor and wit, Nina shares her experiences as a fearless pioneer, determined to fulfill her intellectual potential as a real estate and marketing consultant.

Whether she’s hiding in the ladies’ room because it’s official policy to not hire women professionals, or taken aback when told, “That was an intelligent comment…for a woman,” Nina’s tales from the battlefield serve as a vivid reminder of how much has changed since the “good old days” of the 1960s and ‘70s.