I was one of the fortunate dozen or so men who attended the Sept. 30 all-day conference called "Groundbreaking Women in Construction," along with 300 women, in San Francisco. Your editorial, "Both Men and Women Should Mentor Youth with Talent," builds on the topic of mentoring, which speakers and panelists discussed throughout the day (ENR 10/11 p. 48). The audience may have thought mentoring was the intended major theme of the conference.
To me, the conference was a great deal more than that. At one level it was a celebration of how far women have come in the design and construction arena since the pioneering days of Julia Morgan. I think the data presented clearly shows there has been progress. At times it seems that there was a tacit assumption that anything less than 50% representation of women in this field is a regrettable shortfall. Whether numerically equal partic-ipation by women is imperative and desirable for its own sake was seldom questioned.