Making Non-Traditional Jobs Women’s Work : Local consortium seeks trainers and recruits for Labor Department program emphasizing occupations dominated by men.

Teach a woman to type, and she’ll eat for a day. Teach her to lay bricks, repair cars or drive a truck, and she’ll eat for a lifetime.

That’s the idea--more or less--behind a U.S. Department of Labor initiative to train women in non-traditional occupations.

Jobs that have been held mostly by men tend to pay more, the department argued when it passed the initiative in 1991, under then-Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole. The law was hailed as a recognition that most training segregates women into lower-paying jobs.

The initiative, called the Non-Traditional Employment for Women Act, is an amendment to the 1982 Job Training Partnership Act, established to re-educate and find jobs for low-income and laid-off workers.

Money to fund the new women’s projects--$1.5 million nationally--became available last July but has not yet been distributed. Orange County offices that will administer the funds are working on how to find women interested in the program and match them with non-traditional job opportunities.

“Our first impression was that what we had to do was call the union and ask about the carpenter’s apprenticeship programs,” said Margo West, manager of planning and information systems for the Orange County Consortium, which administers federal job training funds. “But it’s not that simple.”

Hurdles include identifying female clients interested in doing something non-traditional, recruiting trainers, finding employers willing to hire them and providing support afterward, including counseling, if they encounter on-the-job prejudice.

In a nutshell, the job training offices are being asked to engineer societal change, which is a tall order, according to West.

Her office has selected what it thinks might be the fastest route: encouraging women to train for jobs in emerging careers. Said West: “People don’t have a perception yet that it’s a ‘girl job’ or a ‘boy job.’ ”

Chiropractic assistant, transportation coordinator, certified computer network engineer and hazardous waste management worker are four occupations identified so far.

Those are occupations that will be in demand in the coming months, according to the private industry council West works with to administer the job training funds. The council is made up of members from industry, education, labor unions, the state Employment Development Department and local social service agencies.

Another of Orange County’s three job training partnership act offices, the one serving Santa Ana, is working on a training program for women interested in becoming apprentices for trade union jobs, such as carpentry or electrical wiring. The program would help women update their math and science skills before taking the entrance exam, said Patti Nunn, executive director of the Santa Ana Private Industry Council.

“If the economy turns around, this program might be really exciting,” Nunn said. “But in this recession, it’s hard to find non-traditional jobs.”

Her office is also emphasizing non-traditional jobs for women in its orientation talks. And it is keeping track, for the first time, of how many women select such jobs, instead of opting for clerical work or something similar.

While the federally funded programs are inching forward, a state-funded program for high school girls began in February. Making Electives Count for Career Achievement, or MECCA, offers an after-school oceanography course for girls in the vocational program at Troy High School in Fullerton.

The course is intended to make the vocational program more attractive to girls, who make up only about 40% of the student population.

The oceanography course offers field trips to offshore oil rigs, hands-on training in computer-assisted drafting, and course work in engineering, mechanics, pollution and wetlands preservation, said Laurie Manseau, research and development supervisor for the North Orange County Regional Occupational Program in Anaheim, which provides the funding.

A speaker from the Society for Women Engineers is scheduled, and the class will present its final projects next month to a gathering of teachers, parents and industry representatives.

“We try to give girls the support services to encourage them to stay with the Troy Tech program,” the vocational program at Troy High School, said Manseau.