Lucille Pieti was a brilliant, beautiful engineer for Chrysler, who, because of the the tenor of the times, was trotted out by Chrysler as if she were a trained show-pony, with patronizing gibes about recipes and dresses thrown in with compliments on her brain-power.
She was the first female at her college to get a Mechanical Engineering Degree (one of the 0.17% of those who were women nationwide awarded degrees in that field), and graduated with classmates who painted her drill-press pink and made jokes at her expense. She tied in with Chrysler early-on, and that determination paid off with a position after her schooling.
Unfortunately, she tired of being "That Gal in a Guy Job" and quit in 1955. She eventually returned to the field many years later, and lived a long and productive life, passing in 2011.
Here's an interesting feature on Lucille, and the difficulties she dealt with living in a very different world than the one we do today... Chrysler’s “Most Beautiful Engineer,” and the industry’s forgotten sexist history, By Justin Hyde
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