Peggy, I started my engineering career in 1982, but on the east coast (NY, specifically). I was an entry level engineer then, but it had taken me 2 years to get that first job. In the meantime, I was teaching math to juvenile delinquents (sentenced by the courts) in order to eat. I still found plenty of discrimination.
In 1962, when I graduated from college (at age 19), I never did manage to find a job - and that was 4 years after Sputnik when there was a national frenzy to get scientists and engineers to keep up with the Russians and my degree was in the most sought after field - Aerospace, plus I graduated eighth in my class from a small, but very highly ranked engineering college, after another young lady and I were the first two female undergraduates ever admitted. I couldn't get interviews with most of the companies that came to my college campus because I was too short and weighed too little (I kid you not - they used those requirements to weed out women candidates) and the few companies who did interview me all started with the same question - "how many words a minute do you type?" - not even "do you type?". My answer was zero, which apparently was the wrong one.
Fiona, you're very perceptive - it did hurt very much, but it wasn't even only my father. My mother accepted her lot in life and could never understand why I couldn't follow her example. When I graduated from high school and decided to study engineering, my parents commanded (!) that I will *NOT* study engineering - I am to study something useful, namely home economics.