Students are welding the old to the new at Rosie the Riveter High School.
The Long Beach, Calif., charter school was created in 2007 to help prepare teenage girls for careers as welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and other trades.
Today, its 50-member student body includes girls and boys, but its organizers still attempt to break down barriers for women seeking careers in what largely remains a man’s world.
“It’s about trying to change the way society looks at women,” said Lynn Shaw, who helped create Rosie the Riveter High. “We just feel that women should have an equal opportunity.”
She knows plenty about nontraditional jobs: “I’ve worked as a miner at a limestone mine in the desert, a steelworker in Pennsylvania and a longshoreman in San Francisco,” she said. “For me, it was all about the money. Women in nontraditional jobs earn 20 percent to 40 percent more than women in what are considered ‘traditional’ women’s jobs. That’s $1 million over a lifetime.”
In addition to hands-on vocational instruction taught by instructors at nearby community colleges, students take a full range of academic courses required by the state to graduate from high school.