Mwell, that is reminiscent of my experience in $LARGE_CORP where I was hired with a few years experience as a soft. eng. and was given a completely nontechnical role (I was supposed to make wireframes in PowerPoint), while a new graduate who was hired at the same time as myself was put in a "hands on" coding position. That other hire was a guy. My explanation was that $LARGE_CORP simply thought that, hey, she's a chick, she doesn't want to code. Or something along those lines.

That was a private company, btw. I think large companies have problems with personel like that, whether public or private. They have problems, in that their understanding of the labour market has stayed in the 1930's. Anyway I think the same thing that happened with me happened to your friend in NASA.