“I am woman, hear me roar,” sang Helen Reddy in her 1972 hit record, “I am Woman.”  That statement is truer than true in engineering. Although not widely known, a small number of women have achieved impressive engineering accomplishments that have changed the way the world lives, works, and plays.

#1:  The First Woman to be a Full Member of ASCE

Born in Idaho Springs, Colorado, in 1898, Elsie Eaves was the first woman to earn a degree in civil engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  She began her career as a draftsman for the United States Bureau of Public Roads in Denver, Colorado. In 1925, she joined the Women’s Engineering Society (at the time, the only organization for women engineers).

In 1929, Eaves developed the first national inventory of municipal and industrial sewage disposal facilities and compiled statistics on needed construction, which helped revitalize the construction industry during the Great Depression.

Eaves eventually became the manager of the Construction Economics department at Engineering and News-Record (ENR), where she organized and directed the measurement post-war planning. Her findings became the official progress report of the construction industry, used by ASCE and the Committee of Economic Development to estimate work that was to go forward following the end of World War II.

In 1979, ASCE awarded her honorary membership in recognition of her achievements.

#2:  The Architect of Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi

Actress, film producer, and inventor Hedy Lamarr (born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914) appeared in 30 films during her 28-year career in Europe and the U.S. She became disillusioned with Hollywood, and that’s when the world learned that her genius far surpassed her beauty.

Lamarr and composer George Antheil co-invented and patented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication, originally intended to enable Allied torpedoes to travel unseen under the water without being intercepted by German intelligence and defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers.

Although the patent was granted in 1942, the pair’s frequency-hopping technology wasn’t actually used during WWII. It was, however, finally picked up by the Navy in 1957 and is one of the principles behind today’s Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi technologies.

The value of Lamarr and Antheil’s work was finally recognized in 2014 when they were posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

#3:  The First Woman Elected to Membership in ASME

Catherine (“Kate”) Anselm Gleason, born November 25, 1865, was the daughter of William Gleason, inventor of the first bevel gear planer machine and the owner of Gleason Works, one of the most important producers of gear-cutting machine tools in the world.

In 1893, Gleason toured Europe to expand her father’s business—one of the first attempts at globalization by an American manufacturing company.  Her superior knowledge of machined parts and their manufacture helped her close many deals, and the factory became the leading U.S. producer of gear-cutting machinery prior to World War I. Her reputation in the machine-tool business led her to become, in 1918, the first woman elected to membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

After leaving her father’s factory, Gleason started several businesses of her own, including Concrest, where she experimented with concrete to build inexpensive, fireproof houses via her proprietary concrete pouring method. As a result, Kate became the first female member of the American Concrete Institute.

#4:  The Woman Behind New York’s Brooklyn Bridge

Emily Warren Roebling (1843–1903), educated at Georgetown Visitation Academy (now Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School), is best known for her 10 years of work on the Brooklyn Bridge after her husband and chief engineer, Washington Roebling, became bedridden. The bridge had been designed by Washington’s late father, John A. Roebling.

While John Roebling was starting his preliminary work on the Brooklyn Bridge, Emily and Washington went to Europe to study the use of caissons for bridge construction. John Roebling died of tetanus in 1869, following an accident at the bridge site, so Washington Roebling was assigned as chief engineer of the bridge’s construction.  But sadly, he developed decompression sickness (“caisson disease”) by going to underwater depths (to study the placement of caissons) and not rising at the proper speed.

During her husband’s illness, Emily Roebling dedicated herself to the completion of the bridge, relaying information from him to onsite personnel and giving him progress reports. Through her husband’s teachings, she developed an extensive knowledge of material strength, stress analysis, cable construction, and the calculation of catenary curves.  She took over much of the chief engineer duties, including day-to-day onsite supervision and project management.

Upon the completion of the bridge in 1883, Emily Roebling was the first to cross it by carriage. At the opening ceremony, she was honored in a speech by Abram Stevens Hewitt, who said that the bridge was “…an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred.”

#5:  The First Female Engineer of Paraná, Brazil

Enedina Marques (1913–1981) was an example of resilience at a time when discrimination was still prevalent following the abolition of slavery. Born in Curitiba, Paraná in Brazil, she overcame numerous obstacles in her quest to enroll in a civil engineering course.

In 1940, Marques entered the University of Paraná’s School of Engineering, from which she graduated in 1945, thus becoming the first female engineer of Paraná and the first black, female, Brazilian engineer.  She was also the first woman to be awarded an engineering degree in Paraná.

In 1946, Marques became an engineering assistant at the State Secretary of Transport and Public Works. She was subsequently transferred to the State Department of Water and Electric Power, where, as an employee of the hydroelectric plant, she worked on harnessing the waters of rivers Capivari, Cachoeira, and Iguaçu.

One of Marques’ main achievements was the construction of the Capivari-Cachoeira plant, the largest underground hydroelectric plant in the south of Brazil.