Although it was nice to see, the Society of Women Engineers
http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/ was in full advocacy swing at that point, with strong chapters at the major engineering universities, encouraging women to go into Engineering of any stripe. IBM itself at that time would also move and/or retrain employees who had either become "too expensive" (due to service) or whose jobs had been terminated (e.g. end of contract) or outsourced.