When chartered accountant, Mrs. Jeanne Atherden, decided years ago to switch her education focus from becoming a doctor to majoring in accountancy, little did she know that it would be an uphill battle. The reason? Firms simply did not want to hire female accountants.

Mrs. Atherden who is the manager of the investment division and head of business management at the Bank of Bermuda, said her path to success included an early suggestion from Mr. Mansfield Brock, one of the most quietly influential education advocates over several decades.

She was a teenaged, fifth-year student in the Berkeley Institute when she heard Mr. Brock talk about accountancy as a steady path for upward mobility.

But it was never her first choice. She first left home for Montreal with her sights set on becoming a doctor.

Last week, sitting in her corner office on the fourth floor of the bank's Compass Point building, she thought back to that day in Berkeley.

"Mr. Brock was our physics teacher in Berkeley. And he used to talk about accounting, saying "that's the profession you need to get into today.'' "I thought to myself that it sounded great, but I had already had my application off to McGill. I was going to be doctor. The accountancy idea did stay in the back of my mind.

"During the first year when I was doing my biology class, dissecting animals, I thought dissecting animals really wasn't the sort of thing I really liked to do. So I switched to commerce and accounting, with a view to doing the licentiate in accounting.'' After five years, as a McGill graduate, she articled with Clarkson Gordon, and stayed in their employ for a total of five years.

But she knew she was at cross-roads. If she stayed, she'd be an audit manager at the firm, and a future step would be a partnership. She would be tied to Canada. But she wanted to return home. Back in Bermuda, she joined Cooper & Lines as an audit manager for two years. During school years, she had previously spent summers working for the local partnership of Coopers & Lybrand.

She became the director of finance for the Bermuda Hospitals Board for ten years and then worked for seven years as the general manager of the law firm of Appleby, Spurling & Kempe. She joined the bank about a year and a half ago.

It was not all a fait accompli.

Graduating from McGill with accountancy in her future, she faced the big wall that stood in the way of the few contemporaries she had at the time. In some cases, she was told flat out by Canadian firms she was interviewing with, that people of her kind were just not a part of the firm's hiring practices.

It was not because she was Bermudian, or black. But because she was a woman.

"Lots of firms were not taking women,'' she recalled. "It was around the end of the 1960s or 1970. But with all of that I was offered jobs by Coopers & Lybrand in Montreal and Clarkson Gordon.

"I remember going for an interview, where this man turned directly to me and said that although he was having an interview with me, he could tell me categorically that his firm did not hire women.

"I went to another interview and was told pretty much the same thing but that the firm was now considering changing that policy, that I might be the first and, depending on how I did, they might hire some more women.'' That was Clarkson Gordon, who hired two women CAs that year, five more the next year and later they had women partners.

She accepts that it was a transitional period still for businessmen who were not used to having women in the workplace.

"They were coming to grips with the fact that women were going to be in business. It was very much a transitional stage for business. In my accounting class, there was probably just 10 percent women.'' She agrees that chartered accountancy can be viewed as a convenient profession, with a great deal of flexibility in corporate movement that lasts throughout a career. Like law, there are a wealth of corporate possibilities.

These are not ideas that escape her when talking to her two daughters about their academic future.

"You can be an accountant, strictly an accountant, an auditor with an accounting firm, or with a private company. You can decide to be a computer specialist. A CA covers all of that.

"You can decide to go into liquidations, trusts and taxation. If you become a CA and you article, you are going into lots of companies at a high enough level to get a feel for what it's all about.

"You can go from accounting into insurance, after that. A lot of people do.

In Bermuda, if you are thinking about a career, this gives you the greatest opportunity to look around and choose something which is going to develop you.'' Her relaxation at 47 years old is a little golf and being with friends. Her husband, Max, manages the Port Royal Golf Course. They met in Bahamas, when he was a golf pro there, and she was a tourist from Canada. It was around the time she was preparing to move back to Bermuda.

Married for 21 years, they have two teenaged girls, Bermuda College-bound Angela, 17, and Saltus student Alison, 14.

Her game? "I have a working woman's handicap. It's reasonable in terms of some games, where I can have streaks of brilliance. And other days its different. I just don't have all the time I want to get out and get it down.'' Any lessons from Max? (Big smile on her face).

"He never gave me a golf lesson. When we met, we used to go and play tennis.

In golf, Max will give me tips. Husband and wives don't give each other lessons.'' She laughs.

Mrs. Atherden believes that people need to consciously be aware of whether they see their job as fun, whether they believe there are challenges for them.

She does not know about "nine-to-five'' but believes that work is meant to be done.

So what exactly does she do? "The investment division has lots of branches, stockbroking, portfolio management etc. There are section heads responsible for those areas. My section, business management, is a support area that provides all of the non-professional activities.

"We have the finances, so I have a controller who reports to me. We deal with the office management, the computer systems, all of those support things, other than marketing, that are necessary for the investment division to function.

"We deal with all of the budgets and create all of the management information for the rest of the division. We provide the back-up support. We do all of the computer entries for the transactions, the securities trades.

"We provide all of the services for things in the office involving faxes, the computers, the copiers, the reception and mail. And then the bank has a computer system which we support in terms of training.'' Mrs. Atherden is a director of the Bermuda Telephone Company Ltd. and her family owns Adderley Brothers Travel.

For five years she presided over the Bermuda Netball Association, while playing goal defence in the league. She played and coached volleyball for seven years.

She's been president of the Harrington Sound School, during years her children were at the school.

JEANNE ATHERDEN -- "I remember going for an interview, where this man turned directly to me and said that although he was having an interview with me, he could tell me categorically that his firm did not hire women.''