Women seeking career opportunities in the 1950s often found themselves limited to the more traditional roles of secretaries, teachers and nurses – but some women managed to push open doors into nontraditional careers.

Later, the daughters of these early career women kicked doors open wider and gave college graduates more opportunities to excel in a variety of careers. However, the glass ceiling still kept them out of the male-only executive suites.

Today, the granddaughters of that post-war female work force have few limitations as they earn college degrees in traditionally male fields and march through corporate office doors on their career quest.

Three New Mexico State University alumni in nontraditional careers – Julie Dill ’81, Rita Gonzales ’91 and Christina Turner ’00 – say they didn’t enter their professions knowing they would be unique. They just did it because they found it interesting and challenging.

When Dill obtained her business degree she thought she would enter the more traditional world of banking. During her first job search, the discovery she could earn more income in the oil and gas industry set her on a journey into the world of roughnecks.

“My entire career has been in energy and I’ve seen some real progress in the number and type of senior roles that women occupy,” says Dill, president of Union Gas in Ontario, Canada, a natural gas distribution company with 2,200 employees that serves 1.3 million customers.

“Shell Oil Company, where I started, was making significant inroads by putting women in pretty high-level, powerful positions. It’s been a bit slow going, and not every segment nor industrialized country is as progressive as the United States,” says Dill, a member of NMSU’s College of Business Advisory Council, the College of Business Hall of Fame, and one of Commodities Now magazine’s 2002 Top 50 Women in Energy.

Gonzales has never seen herself as unique, even though she has known she was a minority in the world of electrical engineering. “I just went out and did it,” says Gonzales, an employee of Sandia National Laboratories since 1992.

Through the years, Gonzales’ career objective has been to obtain challenging positions in an organization that will broaden her skills and provide opportunities for growth. Sandia has given her the opportunity as she has moved from being a member of the technical staff to her current position as products manager. She now manages and develops a staff of 25 engineers, technicians and contractors who provide mixed signal integrated circuit design for a variety of government applications.

“I’ve known that I’m a minority as a female. I saw it, especially in the beginning, when I was the only woman among 25 engineers at a meeting. I don’t know that I ever really thought of myself as unique. I just sort of do what I think I should be doing and hopefully succeed at that,” says the NMSU Foundation Board member and nominee for the National Hispanic Engineering Award in 1998 and 1997 and the Women on the Move Award in 1995.

Turner’s is yet another story. In the world of the Cooperative Extension Service, the 4-H agricultural agent has traditionally been a male teaching boys and girls about livestock and agriculture, while the female agent in the county office worked with the girls on home economics projects. But as in other segments of our society, those roles also are shifting and now women are becoming agricultural agents.

Turner, one of 10 women in NMSU’s Cooperative Extension Service serving as agriculture agents, says she wasn’t surprised when she assumed the Santa Fe County Extension 4-H agricultural agent position.

“Having grown up in Extension, I value what 4-H does for youth and I really love working with them as they learn about agriculture,” says Turner the daughter of a county agricultural agent. “I always thought maybe I’d be a veterinarian. It wasn’t too long after I got into college that I realized I didn’t want to be a vet. But I kept working on my animal science degree knowing that it would all come together.”

Each of these women has had her moment of being discredited because of her gender.

“My first assignment with NMSU was with the Northern New Mexico Outreach Project that helped underserved audiences – Native American and Hispanic producers – in our state. I was the agent for the 10 southern pueblos,” Turner says. “At that time I was the agricultural agent, not a 4-H agent, which was really interesting because in the environment within the pueblo a lot of things, such as farming and livestock production, are not women’s roles. It was sometimes very hard to go in and talk to the livestock producers because they didn’t view you as an authority. Sometimes I had to call upon male Extension agents to talk to the producers even when I was more qualified.”

Even as president of a division of Spectra Energy Co., Dill says she has her moments.

“Recently I was on a panel at a conference, and I knew immediately when talking to the moderator I was in for a bit of trouble because he looked at me and said, ‘You’re a president of a company?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said ‘Well you look really nice today.’ I thought, Oh dear! And sure enough the man cut me off, I had three points to make, I made two and he cut me off. It was astounding,” Dill says.

Knowledge, skills and personality are the tools that bridge the gender gap for these NMSU alumnae.

“You have to build the relationships with those you’re working with to show them you are capable and can be an authority,” Turner says. “They begin to trust you when they see that they benefit from the things you are telling them.”

Gonzales says she doesn’t think she ever felt her co-workers didn’t respect her technical abilities. “I’m ready to admit when I’m wrong, or if I don’t know something I’m not afraid to ask questions. I work within my abilities and I think they respect that,” she says.

Each realizes she is a pioneer for women in the future.

“Traditionally, women in the energy world serve in the accounting and finance area as I did,” Dill says. “But moving into the operational side, I’m seeing more women interested in it because they are seeing other women who have taken the plunge. While we may not have an engineering background, we are being successful in those kinds of areas as well. I’m seeing more people wanting the opportunity.”

Each knows she is a role model for young girls who have their own dreams of career success.

“I tell young ladies to go after their goals, whatever it is, no matter what the obstacles. Obstacles can be overcome and there is really nothing they can’t do. You just have to go for it, regardless of what other people think you can do,” Gonzales says. “In some cases you have to have your own will and desire to do it.”