SAN FRANCISCO — A packed room of female engineers was told that taking risks and not worrying about change was the only way to break the corporate glass ceiling.

"Success is really in your head and you carry it with you every day," said Cheryl Shavers, an executive with Intel Corp., who addressed a Women in EDA session on Sunday prior to the start of the 35th Design Automation Conference. Shavers was inducted into the International women of Technology Hall of Fame in 1996.

With four other women and one man, Shavers held forth on Sunday at an all-day session on employment and empowerment issues. Most agreed that while the engineering and computer sciences is still dominated by men, success and even CEO slots are possible for women.

"You have to feel proud of what you are today," Shavers told the 150-plus attendees. "The package that you are is the package that you are. Keep what you like and enhance" other aspects.

EllenYoffa, senior manager for computer architecture and design automation with IBM (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.), parlayed a PhD in physics from MIT into a successful career at IBM and in various industry groups.

She urged women engineers to focus on goals and not to get "in response mode."

"You don't have to answer 50 e-mails" every day, she said. "Focus on your own agenda."

Be willing to take risks, she said. "If it's an assignment you don't understand, that's OK," she added. "You'll learn something."

U.C. Berkeley Engineering professor Richard Newton, the self-described "token male" on the panel, said decade-old efforts to improve the percentage of women in EE and CS programs is having mixed results. While women students tend to do slightly better in grade average than men, self-confidence is still a concern. One national study found that twice as many women as men question their abilities in college, he noted.

A recent Berkeley survey found that 14.8 percent of the applicants to the university's EE/CS program were women. The school offered admissions to 20.9 percent, but the percentage of enrolled women ultimately fell back down to 14.8, Newton said. Only 6.7 percent of the faculty is female, he added.

The panelists shared the lighter, odder moments of their careers as well.

Vicki Pachera, an executive with Cadence Design Systems Inc., said that early in her career she spent many years overseeing programs involving Japanese teams based in the United States. The gender and cultural differences became apparent.

In one meeting held in Japan, an executive asked her, through an interpreter, if she would go shopping for lingerie with him. She smiled but didn't reply. The next day she received a written apology, she noted.

Another meeting fell apart with one of Pachera's managers storming from the room and a Japanese leader crying. Pachera said she called a time out for lunch and had everyone go their separate ways to cool off. The tactic worked and the meeting later resumed.

Pachera said she takes vacations to distant lands where she doesn't know the language to help build self-confidence.

Lily Chang, a senior director at Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.), said she ended up in engineering because she flunked a tryout to be a stewardess, one of the few good career paths for women in Taiwan after she graduated from college.

Another panelist, Penny Herscher, president and chief executive officer of Simplex, said she was driven toward the chief executive's office for one reason: "Until I did it, I wasn't going to get my father's approval."

As for balancing work and home, the panelists agreed it was difficult at times. Herscher noted that she employs two nannies for her two children, a cleaning woman and a gardener. She doesn't cook at all during the week. "Any hour I'm not working as CEO, I'm playing with my children," she said. "Let all the little [stuff] go."