March 8, 2022 | By Penny Cotner, Infinite Electronics President & Chief Executive Officer
When many think of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren are the names that most often come to mind. For me, however, it’s JoAnn Morgan. JoAnn, the instrumentation controller for the mission, was the only woman in the room at the time of the launch, and the first woman allowed in the launch room at all. Seated in the middle of the third row and surrounded by men dressed in white button ups and ties, she broke the bias of what many thought of a woman’s role in the workplace and in aerospace. On her first day at the blockhouse, the security guard told her no women had worked there—which was true, until JoAnn. There wasn’t even a women’s restroom, so she had to use the men’s room. She undoubtedly battled bias. However, her tenacity, resiliency and innovative spirit later landed her in the boardroom as the first woman as a senior executive at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
JoAnn’s work with NASA would go on to pave the way for women in engineering, inspiring young girls to pursue their interest in the field. I was one of those young girls. I grew up in a house familiar with engineering; my father was a test engineer and worked on the Apollo program. I always held a love for math and science, those core STEM courses, which led me to pursue a B.S. in electrical engineering from California State University, Northridge. After graduation, I went on to work as an electrical engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company and Rockwell on the International Space Station program. That women like JoAnn had already set the stage is the reason this was possible for me.
While there has been a rise of women joining the engineering field, a large gender gap in the industry remains. In 2020, only 17% of engineering specialists were women. This gap can lead to bias—whether explicit or implicit. And these biases can deter women from pursuing a career in STEM altogether.
Further, some women engineers are assigned to “soft work” while their male counterparts perform the more hands-on projects. As a result, approximately 40% of women are leaving the engineering workforce by midcareer.
We can change this trajectory. According to one study, well-represented mentorship can help alleviate this issue. It has been proven that women who are mentored by other female engineers have more confidence in their work and talents and have a better sense of belonging, feeling less invisible. This is one reason why we launched a mentoring program at Infinite Electronics, but I know more work lies ahead to break biases and drive diversity and equity in engineering and other STEM fields.
For today—International Women’s Day—let’s celebrate women like JoAnn for their role in helping to #BreakTheBias while recognizing that there is more work to do. It is now our responsibility to pay it forward.
Penny Cotner is president and CEO of Infinite Electronics, a leading global supplier of electronic components serving the urgent needs of engineers through a family of highly recognized brands.
