In 1963, a woman accepting a paid position-even a teaching position in a university engineering department-is thought to bring shame on her family. An upper middle-class wife was supposed to be supported, if not by her husband, then by her family. .
But Claude Gruen, husband of author Nina Jaffe Gruen, sees her as a partner professional..
Facing 160 disrespectful male students in a department with no full-time female faculty members is just the beginning of Nina's foray into an exclusively male professional world-and she learned a lot about how to be taken seriously.
With great humor and wit, Nina shares her experiences as a fearless pioneer, determined to fulfill her intellectual potential as a real estate and marketing consultant.
Whether she's hiding in the ladies' room because it's official policy to not hire women professionals, or taken aback when told, "That was an intelligent comment...for a woman," Nina's tales from the battlefield serve as a vivid reminder of how much has changed since the "good old days" of the 1960s and '70s.
About the Author: Nina Jaffe Gruen has been the principal sociologist in charge of market research and analysis at Gruen Gruen + Associates since cofounding the firm in 1970. She is a pioneer in synthesizing the results of behavioral research with quantitative time-series data to forecast market reactions.
She is past president of the International Women's Forum of Northern California. In 1984, Gruen was the first woman to be elected president of the Western Regional Science Association and first female trustee (currently honorary trustee) of the Urban Land Institute. She is past Chair of the California Airspace Advisory Committee, a member of CREW and Lambda Alpha, an honorary land economics society.
Gruen has lectured at major universities and published over seventy-five articles. Since January 2014, she has been "Dear Ms. Real Estate" for ALM Real Estate Media Group, publishing two columns a month on GlobeSt.com that also appear regularly in Forum Magazine.
