Veteran Feminists of America
 
Veteran Feminists of America
 

News Special

 
KAREN SPINDEL - PIONEER FEMINIST OF THE MONTH - JULY 2009 
 
SpindelHdIn the mid 1960's, before "The Feminine Mystique" awakened America's women, Karen Spindel was an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at George Washington University, the only female in all but one of her engineering classes. She'd applied at GWU as a liberal arts major because she didn't expect to be accepted into engineering. But once she accomplished that, she tried to change her major to engineering, at which time the officials tried (insultingly) to talk her out of it--back then, most colleges didn't allow women to study engineering. 
 
In 1969, her senior year,Karen went on a tour to Bethlehem Steel in Sparrows Point, MD, with her student chapter of the Society of Mechanical Engineers. Bethlehem personnel prohibited her from touring the plant because she was a woman---and  even positioned an armed guard  on the bus to make sure she wouldn't join her schoolmates.
 
Karen received a Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society Women's Badge during her junior year at GWU. "If I had been a male," she says, "I would have become a member. But in 1968 they didn't accept women; instead they gave us badges and printed our pictures in the magazine. A year later, during my senior year, Tau beta Pi voted to accept rather than except women, and I had the pleasure of becoming the first female inductee from GWU."
SpindelHallFM 
After  graduation in 1969 she  faced and fought rampant job discrimination and was finally   hired by Robins Engineers and Constructors in Totowa, NJ. Ironically, one of her first assignments was to design overland conveyors for Bethlehem Steel. 

In the mid 1970s she organized a protest at the Passaic Public Library, demanding that women be allowed to get library cards in their own names. Prior to that, women had to declare their marital status and use Mrs. followed by their husband's name on their cards. 
 
In 1972 she joined Passaic County NOW, serving as membership coordinator for 20 years, marching, lobbying,  demonstrating, lecturing, and  continues to beactive in every area of feminism today, especially for the ERA.
        
Karen lives in Clifton, NJ where she is a partner in Database Place LLC, a clinical quality software company and is completing her chronicle of growing up feminist in a sexist society. 
 
Karen is proud of her two feminist  daughters. Samantha, 37, has a Masters in counseling and runs an "I can problem solve" program in Paterson, NJ for at-risk students. Rachel, 20, is a junior at Smith College majoring in politics. In September 1986 Karen was honored on  her 50th Birthday by Samantha with a page in the Women's Hall of Fame Book of Lives and Legacies in Seneca Falls, "One of the best gifts I ever received," she says.

Contact Karen -- [email protected] 
 
 
Visit the VFA!  www.vfa.us