It´s lonelier at the top [Careers]

Betty Shanahan remembers often being the only woman in a meeting room. Someone would curse and then immediately look at her and say, "Sorry, Betty." "They were doing it as a nice gesture," says Shanahan, now the executive director of the Society of Women Engineers, in Chicago. "But the subtle message is \´Oh, I can\´t swear because Betty\´s here.\´ " It\´s a trivial example, she admits, but add up enough incidents like this one and it says you don\´t belong.