Technikatörténeti szemle 23. (1997-98)

TANULMÁNYOK - Vámos Éva Katalin: Women’s Opportunities of Studying and Practising Engineering in Hungary from 1895 to 1968 (On the example of Budapest Technical University and its women students)

Table 3 Women in the hierarchy of the teaching & scientific staff at the Engineering Faculties of Budapest Technical University, 1966/67 Faculty „Docent" (Associate Professor) University Assistant Lecturer University Assistant Trainee Scientific co-worker Total Mechanical Engineering 12 9 1 , . 1* 23 Chemical Engineering 1 20 29 — 11" 61 Electric Engineering 1 14 26 2 2* 45 Total 2 46 64 3 13 129 *On the pay-roll of the Hungarian Academy of Science ** Eight out of them on the pay-roll of the Hungarian Academy of Science. The life of one of the two docents, Éva Bányai, shall be described here as, beside having to cope with the barriers that stood in the way of women, in general, she shared the fate of many (and not only women) whose career was affected first by fascist then by communist laws/decrees. She was not an engineer, but a chemist, However, she spent the greatest part of her life teaching future generations of chemical engineers and thus certainly merits to be commemorated here. She was born in Budapest, 1924, in a half-Jewish family. Her father, a bank clerk, became in his later years director of a big factory owned by the bank he was working for which produced bricks and other building material. Éva herself attended the renowned secondary school run by Ursuline nuns. She seemed to be good at languages: beside Latin, German and French, which at that time formed part of the curriculum of many secondary schools in Hungary, she studied English, later also Russian. She wanted to study chemistry. However, after finishing secondary school in 1942 she was not admitted to university owing to the laws then already in vigour which barred the way to people of Jewish origin to higher education. So she started work at the laboratory of the brick factory in order to gain some skills in chemical work. In the last weeks of World War II, her father was carried off by the fascists never to turn up again. The family never learned where and how he had been killed. After the end of the war she managed to get access to the University of Sciences of Budapest, where she finished her studies of chemistry in due course. She got employment first at the analytical laboratory of a sulfuric acid factory. In 1949 higher educa-