Women who go to work in male-dominated fields often really love the work. Nicky and Susan took the Trades Exploration Program for Women at BCIT and discovered that they really liked working with metal. Nikki was a chef and she said cutting metal was just like cake decorating. She and Susan applied and were accepted into the full-time Sheet Metal Working course.

Trade courses offered through BCIT, the Pacific Marine Training Institute or community colleges are a good idea, especially for women who may not have much experience with the tools or the vocabulary of trade jobs. Some of these courses only require a grade 10 education, however, it is strongly recommended that you get your high school diploma.

These courses are not the only way to get trades training. One hundred and ninety trades in BC have apprenticeship programs. They are mostly construction, automotive and metal fabricating trades. If you can find a trained tradesperson to take you on as an apprentice, you can learn on the job and be eligible to have additional training paid for.

If you are interested in a trade and want to find out how to become an apprentice, you can get more information by phoning the Skill Development Centre of the Ministry of Advanced Education, Training and Technology. The phone number will be in the blue pages of your telephone book under BC Government/Advanced Education, Training and Technology/ Apprenticeship.

Sometimes, men are not that welcoming to women entering these fields, but let's face it, a woman working in a traditional female job can be just as harassed. Sticking to "women's jobs" has not really made us any safer, just poorer. Women have had to figure out how to deal with harassment in restaurants, stores and offices. We can also figure it out on the shop floors, construction sites, in laboratories and board rooms.

Heather, a boilermaker, loves steel. She says it's one of the most liquid things she can think of to work with. She also says it's true she's been harassed by men on the job, but almost never when she's holding her welding torch.

The other thing that women can sometimes find unwelcoming, especially in science and technology, is the way of thinking.

Marilyn had an arts degree. She decided after several years in the work force that she wanted someone to pay her to watch birds. So she figured she would have to go back to school in biology. She called the biology departments at the local universities and talked to whomever they put her on to. She was shocked to find herself in "Science." She said, "There were no courses on sparrows or birds. There were courses like Ethology and Behavioral Ecology. It was all very daunting."

But Marilyn was determined and she went ahead and applied anyway. At one university, she thought her advisor was overestimating her background and wanted her to start out at too advanced a level. At the other university, she thought the advisor treated her like an eighteen-year-old student coming from high school. She ended up picking the university that was the more progressive, where she knew more people and where there were more ornithologists (someone who studies birds) on the faculty.