MIT needed female graduate students to run its analog computers. The military services were competing with the private sector and with one another. It is true that this was seen as a temporary state of affairs and also true that sexism persisted: Educators worried that they might encourage women to pursue math and science who would then be left high and dry. One electrical company asked for twenty female engineers from Goucher, with the added request, “Select beautiful ones for we don’t want them on our hands after the war.”
