March is Read Her Story month at Fulton County Library System, a chance to learn about women who broke glass ceilings and paved the way for others. Women in Federal service trailblazed, too, but many of them are unknown. Government publications frequently do not name their authors or researchers, yet many women in federal service positively influenced coworkers who were sometimes doubtful of the abilities of women in technical fields. These women often mentored others in their fields and volunteered in their communities to make even more lives better. Their stories deserve to be told.
What was it like to be the only woman in a roomful of scientists, some of whom still believed women's smaller brains meant they were not capable of math computations? Or to be tasked with difficult logistics in an emergency, having to mobilize men who sometimes did not want to take orders from a woman? The Federal Government hires in so many different technical fields - Accountants, Ballistics experts, Cartographers, District attorneys, Environmental engineers, Foresters, Geologists - their jobs cover the entire alphabet. Often, federal service provided opportunity for the first women in many occupations, especially for women of color, women with disabilities, and women veterans.
Here are a few stories of women who have worked, or still work, in federal service. They may sometimes have been anonymous, but they carried out key research and wrote key reports, and their competence changed minds and made the way easier for those who came after them in their fields. Books have not been written about most of them, at least not yet. But their accomplishments stand on their own.
U.S. Bureau of the Census 
Nampeo McKenney, 1938-
Demographer Nampeo McKenney did groundbreaking work at the Census Bureau on data about minority groups for four decades. She started out as a summer student, was asked to stay on, and worked while completing her degree in sociology. She was a statistician at a time when there were very few African Americans in demographics. This was also during years when Census was making major changes in its ways of collecting needed data on race. In 1960, for the first time, race was 
identified in the Census by the individual responding to the Census, rather than by the Census enumerator, so questions had to be devised in ways that would get the best results. In 1980 factors of ethnicity were added, and in 2000 respondents could identify as multiracial. McKenney continued to move up in rank within Census, winning awards and recognitions. By 1996 she served as assistant division chief of the program for special population statistics and was in demand for information relating to race demographics. McKenney used her ability with numbers to help politicians, news organizations, and think tanks see the way that race could correlate with residential patterns, voting patterns and with some economic variables (less so than with health conditions or other situations where economic class could be a more important factor). Aside from her federal service, she has been active in the civil rights movement in her home state of Maryland.
Read Her Story
1970 Census of Population Subject Reports: Negro Population
The social and economic status of negroes in the United States for 1970
The social and economic status of the Black population in the United States for 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974
The social and economic status of the Black population in the United States : an historical view, 1790-1978.
U.S. Army, Central Intelligence Agency
James Tiptree, Jr., 1915-1987
"James Tiptree, Jr.", is well known as a science fiction author, but Tiptree was only the nom de plume of the extraordinary Alice Sheldon, an officer with the WAACs, WACs, and later the an intelligence analyst and CIA operative. With a background in art and writing, Sheldon found herself on Pearl Harbor Day, December 8, 1941, wondering what she, as a woman, could do to help the war effort. There were women pilots who moved warplanes and supply planes, so she first tried training as a pilot, but her eyesight wasn't good enough. Then Congress established the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs), but as an auxiliary to quiet the angry voices against women being 
allowed to join the Army. As an auxiliary the WAACs would not be equal in rank to men, have authority, or receive benefits. Sheldon applied, requesting motor transport or cryptography, did her basic training, and became a supply officer. "My first act as a commissioned officer in the Army of the United States was to repair a toilet," she said later. As the war heated up and the need increased, the WAACs were disbanded in the favor of the Women's Army Corps (WACs) which offered the same ranks, authority and benefits as the men. Sheldon transferred to the Pentagon as a WAC. After a few months of the usual clerical work women were given, she got herself transferred to US Army Air Force photointelligence at the rank of Lieutenant. She was one of just two women in her class, sent for evening training in photointerpretation. These students routinely finished study in the early hours of the morning, then reported for their regular 8-5 work hours after that. After completing training, she worked with the others in the Evaluation and Library Branch, Photographic Division, in the basement of the Pentagon. She became an expert interpreter and wrote manuals that trained others. When war in Europe was over, on V-E Day, May 8, 1945, she was shipped to Europe, the only woman specialist in a division evaluating captured German technology. She mustered out with the rank of major and a Legion of Merit award. She was recruited to help set up a photointelligence section in the CIA, and worked there until 1955 when she left to pursue other ventures, including obtaining a doctorate in experimental psychology, and writing science fiction.
Read Her Story
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service / U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare
Mollie Orshansky, 1915-2006
Mollie Orshansky, a statistician and economist with 46 years of Federal service, did pioneering research on poverty and developed the measures used in the Federal government for determining the official poverty threshold. The first high school graduate and the first college graduate in her family, she obtained an AB in mathematics and statistics from a public university that was part of CUNY in New York City. "If I write about the poor, I don't need a good imagination - I have a good memory" she said later.
After she started working as a federal employee in Washington, she took graduate courses in economics and statistics at the Department of Agriculture Graduate School and at American University. She started as a junior statistical clerk with the U.S. Children's Bureau and was quickly promoted to research clerk in 1939. As a family economist in USDA, she conducted research in family consumption and levels of living (the USDA traditionally has had a role in helping families and the elderly stretch grocery dollars). The understanding Orshansky received from this work led to her later work coming up with a measureable "poverty threshold" still in use today. She wrote and published many papers, monographs, and technical papers describing the measurement of poverty and its application in public policy. While her work and her explanations are professional, her concern for the human experience always comes through. For example, she'd use math to point out that poverty existed even in families with a father working full time, or that families with many children would still be poor even if they had fewer children. Her work influenced President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1960s-era War on Poverty, though it made industrialists uneasy. In an interview with the New York Times in 1989, Orshansky said "I wish I didn't have to go down as the lady who made the poverty index; I wish I could become one of the people who, because she thought up things to investigate, and ways to use the data, we got a better system."
Read Her Story
Remembering Mollie Orshansky, The Developer of the Poverty Thresholds, opens a new window by Gordon M. Fisher, in Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 68, No. 3, 2008
Key Orshansky articles, opens a new window from the Social Security Bulletin
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Home / National Weather Service
June Bacon-Bercey, 1928-2019
June Bacon-Bercey was the first African American woman to receive a degree in meteorology; she later became America's first female TV meteorologist of any race. But she was also a Federal employee with the National Weather Service as their chief of weather and television services. She grew up in Wichita, Kan., an only child who enjoyed bike riding, hiking, playing the piano, and participating in Girl Scout activities. She was excluded from many other activities because her parents were very strict and also because of the racism of the 1940s and 1950s. This exclusion actually helped her later in life as the isolation allowed her to develop discipline and good study habits. The weather, stars, and planets all captivated the young Bacon-Bercey, said her daughter, Dail St. Claire. “She always called herself a nerd and a bookworm. She always asked 'why'.” After a high school physics teacher noticed her interest in water displacement and buoyancy, the teacher encouraged her to consider meteorology. She was accepted into the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), one of the few schools at the time to offer a 4-year degree in the atmospheric sciences, but it wasn't easy as a woman in that discipline. Her own adviser urged her to major in home economics. “I got a D in home economics," Bacon-Bercey later said. "and an A in thermodynamics.”
She earned a Bachelor's degree in meteorology in 1954, and a Master's in 1955, then took a job as a forecaster/analyst for the National Weather Service. Responding to a growing interest in the effect of atomic bombs on the atmosphere, she began work as a senior advisor at the Atomic Energy Commission in 1959. She returned to the National Weather Service after that as a radar meteorologist in New York, and later worked as a meteorologist and administrator from 1975–1978 and 1979–1981, holding roles as Chief, Weather and Television Services.
She also earned a Master’s degree in public administration from the University of Southern California and worked as an aviation specialist in Northern California. She retired from government service in 1990 but continued to be a force of nature in attracting women and minorities to the sciences. She endowed a scholarship for women studying atmospheric sciences and helped fund the meteorology program at Jackson State University in Mississippi, which focuses on bringing more African Americans into the field. She earned multiple awards and accreditations throughout her career, encouraging women to pursue their dreams in weather.
Read Her Story
Kornei, K. (2020), June Bacon-Bercey: Pioneering meteorologist and passionate supporter of science, opens a new window, Eos, 101, . Published on 17 February 2020.
Judicial Branch of the United States
Diane J. Humetewa 1964-
Judge Diane J. Humetewa is the first Native American female and enrolled tribal member to be confirmed to the federal judiciary. She learned the value of public service from her parents. Her father also was a federal employee, first serving on the USS Midway during World War II as a boilermaker, then working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs on as an engineer on road projects. He'd take her, along with her mother, on road trips to his jobs, introducing her to the many different reservations in Arizona. As her parents both attended Indian boarding schools, they agreed that Humetewa should not. She recalled a hesitancy to mention to friends in her public school that, for example, she spent a weekend preparing for a ceremony on the Hopi reservation, that she does not think is a problem for young people today. She graduated from Arizona State University in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science and went to work as a victim advocate for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix, using her familiarity with the many nations she'd visited. She obtained her J.D. in 1993 
from Arizona State's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. She then went to Washington, D.C., to work as an attorney for the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, chaired by Senator John McCain. A mentor for her, McCain requested in his final weeks that she serve as a pallbearer for him, which she did in 2018 at his funeral in Phoenix. She was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2007 as U.S. Attorney, the first Native American to be confirmed, and represented tribal government clients in federal Indian law and natural resources law. President Obama nominated her, and in 2014, she was unanimously confirmed by the Senate as a District Court Judge in the District of Arizona. Judge Humetewa also served as an Appellate Court Judge for the Hopi Tribe Appellate Court (2002-2007). In addition to her judicial responsibilities on the bench, she serves on multiple court committees at the district and circuit levels including Chair on the Ninth Circuit Committee on Tribal-Native Relations. She was appointed by Chief Justice, John G. Roberts, of the U.S. Supreme Court to serve on the Judicial Conference of the United States’ Committee on Federal-State Jurisdiction. Prior to her judicial confirmation, she served as Special Advisor to the President and Special Counsel in the Office of General Counsel at Arizona State University (2011-2014).
Read her story
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry
Dr. Mary Engle Pennington, 1872-1952
Pennington was an oldest child, hard-working, and committed to precision in her scientific work, yet she was denied a bachelor’s degree in 1892 because of her gender. She later earned a doctorate though, from the same institution, and started her own private laboratory to conduct bacteriological and chemical analyses for local physicians. The quality of her work was known to Harvey W. Wiley, a prominent advocate for stricter food and drug regulations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who encouraged her to sit for the
civil service exam because he wanted her for a new lab he was setting up in the Bureau of Chemistry. This new lab would help implement the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. He finally did persuade her, and behind her back, submitted her test results in with other examinees, but identified her as "M.E. Pennington" instead of spelling out her name. She earned the highest score on the exam, and so was offered the job. Once the Civil Service realized the "M" stood for Mary, it told Wiley that since there was no precedent for hiring a woman, the position would have to be offered to someone else. Wiley replied that there was equally no precedent for not hiring someone just because she was female. And she was hired. Pennington set up the new laboratory to Wiley's vision of improving conditions in the cold-storage and transportation industries, coming up with national standards of purity, and developing inspection methods. Pennington went on to hire other women for different duties in the lab. Her work with Wiley set up procedures for maintaining what was called the "cold chain" at a time when more people were living in cities and needing refrigeration for fresh eggs and dairy products. Whereas Wiley used legal methods to force food handlers to adopt safe methods, Pennington relied more on personal persuasion of individual plant owners and warehousemen to improve conditions, arguing that their livelihoods relied on consumer confidence in their products. In 1919 Pennington left civil service to continue her work on food preservation and then developed new interests in the safety of the new frozen foods that dominated the later years of her professional life.
Read her story
Articles in U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricola database, opens a new window
Regulating What We Eat: Mary Engle Pennington and the Food Research Laboratory, opens a new window, by Lisa Mae Robinson, in Agricultural History 64:2 (Spring, 1990)
These have been just a very few of the fascinating stories of women who broke new ground and led the way for others to follow while in Federal service. For each who has had books written about them, such as Rachel Carson, opens a new window (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and Katherine Johnson, opens a new window (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), there are countless others waiting to have their stories shared.
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