prejudice against women in a number of plants where there was no previous experience in the technical employment of women in engineering departments. However, the high turn-over, the youthfulness of the engineering aid group, the additional supervision they needed at a time when experienced supervisors were scarce, and their lack of mechanical "know-how" were the principal disadvantages mentioned in connection with their employment. On the other hand, the advantages of the experiment in its effect on the attitude of engineering personnel toward women workers and in its effect on education have been pointed out by one of the personnel women who supervised a group of cadettes (40). There will continue to be a few openings for women as engineering aids in companies in which they have always been used or in which the war experience indicated their value on certain types of work. But, it is unlikely that many women will be employed as engineering aids in the future, especially as young graduate engineers become available. And those who are, will have little opportunity to advance unless they complete their training and become full-fledged engineers.

Draftsman as Defined in the Dictionary of

Occupational Titles (54)

"Draftsman (professional and kindred). Prepares clear, complete and accurate working plans and detail drawings, from rough or detailed sketches or notes for engineering or manufacturing purposes, according to the specified dimensions: Makes final sketch of the proposed drawing, checking dimension of parts, materials to be used, the relation of one part to another, and the relation of the various parts to the whole structure. Makes any adjustments or changes necessary or desired. Inks in all lines and letters on pencil drawings as required. Exercises manual skill in the manipulation of triangle, T-square, and other drafting tools. Lays tracing paper on drawing and traces drawing in ink. Makes charts for representation of statistical data. Makes finished designs from sketches. Utilizes knowledge of various machines, engineering practices, mathematics, building materials, and other physical sciences to complete the drawings. Classifications are made according to type of drafting, such as draftsman, architectural; draftsman, electrical."

5-63

THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN AS DRAFTSMEN

Draftsmen, who do subprofessional work for engineers and designers preparing the detailed drawings from which the final product is built to exact scale, are grouped according to various gradations in the difficulty of their work. Where there is much drafting work, there is also a job below the level of the draftsman, that of the tracer who makes only simple sketches and copies final drawings on tracing cloth or paper from lay-outs and detail drawings already checked, making minor changes according to specific instructions.

Figure 13.-A draftsman at work on some maps in the production

department of an oil company.

An engineering draftsman in the lowest grade usually does detail drafting to complete engineering drawings for manufacturing or construction purposes, such as copying drawings with minor revisions, dimensioning, scaling, line locationing, preparing sectional views from lay-out drawings from given data and according to standard practices and requirements, and correcting and revising drawings by incorporating specific drawing changes, engineering change orders, shop orders, checkers' notations, and related information. A senior mechanical draftsman detailer makes complex detail drawings from sketches, lay-outs, and assemblies prepared by designers and makes important alterations to drawings as instructed. Women have been employed at all types of drafting but seldom as designer-draftsmen who create designs and supervise the making of the drawings which translate the design into a working drawing from which machinists, mechanics, carpenters, and other artisans can construct or manufacture a pattern and later the finished product accurately and without waste, whether it be a bridge, an electric iron or radio tube, a house, or part of a wheel.

Prewar Distribution

Like women engineers, a few women draftsmen before World War II were found in all the principal specializations. In 1940, according to the United States Census, they totaled 1,414, or less than 2 percent of all draftsmen (43). Judging from the limited data available, there were probably more women draftsmen in the architectural and civil fields than in the mechanical and electrical fields.

Only 5 of the 81 industrial firms and the 18 commercial laboratories visited in connection with this study employed women draftsmen before the war. In all, they employed less than 100 women draftsmen. However, architectural and construction firms were not represented in the sample, and the majority of women draftsmen in private industry were believed to be employed with firms of that type before the

war.

In 1938, the estimated number of draftsmen in the Federal civil service was only 5.200, of whom 160, or 3.1 percent, were women. In 1940, 6 women were appointed to probational or permanent jobs under the civil service (42). The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, the United States Geological Survey, the United States Department of Agriculture, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the War and Navy Departments were among the agencies employing at least 1 woman in such work before the war. Unlike women engineers, women draftsmen were employed in almost every agency in which drafting work was important, although they were few in number in any one agency. On the other hand, a few agencies like the Bureau of Rec

lamation in the United States Department of Interior did not employ women draftsmen until World War II.

Wartime Changes

During the defense period which preceded the war, the United States Civil Service Commission began to recruit engineering draftsmen for many types of drafting including aeronautical, architectural, civil, electrical, heating and ventilating, lithographic, mechanical (machine design), ordnance, plumbing, radio, structural, topographic, and statistical. Industry, too, sought additional draftsmen as the production of new war materials increased the need for draftsmen beyond the approximately 80,000 employed in 1940 (43). Even high school girls who had had mathematics and a little mechanical drawing were hired by some plants, according to school placement bureaus. The need for draftsmen became so great during the war, that special courses to train draftsmen were set up in colleges and technical institutes under the Engineering, Science, and Management War Training Program. The largest number of persons enrolled in any individual course under that program was in engineering drawing and descriptive geometry. In all, 169,313 were enrolled, many of them women (61). A number of special courses were set up to train women draftsmen for particular industries.

A course at Johns Hopkins University, for example, trained high school graduates with at least 2 years of mathematics or its equivalent for engineering drafting in the aircraft industry. The 8-week fulltime course covered shop mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, trigonometric functions, and the solution of the right triangle and shop problems); aircraft nomenclature and Army, Navy, and industrial standards and specifications for airplane construction; and engineering drawing and blueprint analysis (including use of drawing instruments, sketching, standard projection, cross sections, and the development of patterns). A California aircraft company arranged for the training of 313 high school graduates (with 2 years of mathematics) in nearby colleges in 12 groups in a 12-week program covering algebra, plane geometry, trigonometry, descriptive geometry, aircraft drafting, and aircraft materials and process. Two-thirds of those trained were women, who were assigned, like the others, to work as draftsmen in the beginning grade. At first the turn-over was very high, but better selection was done with the later groups, and turn-over was reduced among them. Another aircraft company trained more than 200 women in 4-month full-time courses at a technical school. A radio manufacturing company in a 5-month course trained more than 70 women high school graduates as detailers, preferring those with mathematics background and some physics and art work.