The State of the American Woman

Then: She took up welding to escape vocational-school business classes, "especially the charm course," she said in 1972. The only woman welder at Scientific Atlanta, Janie Cottrell was such a curiosity that the company installed curtains around her workstation. Today she is the lone female operator of the Kennedy Space Center crane.

Now: 'I'm proud that I'm a woman and in a man's field or whatever. But I work with some great guys that have accepted me, have taught me. I don't think they necessarily treat me as a woman. I think they treat me as an equal.'

Watch the interview with Janie Cottrell:

See TIME's 1972 story "A Gallery of American Women."