Breaking out of the pink-collar ghetto: nontraditional jobs for women.

• Author: Coleman, Elizabeth

By entering - and succeeding - in trades traditionally reserved for men, women not only are lifting their families out of poverty, but also are giving their children wider opportunities.

During her first day on the job, Sandy Durham's boss told her to watch out for rattlesnakes. "He wasn't kidding," says Durham, who has seen several while driving a water truck for a road construction crew in southwestern Montana. There are other, more common hazards, such as the heavy, serpentine hose that sometimes flies off the water pump or the sharp inclines of the mountain roads, but Durham is not fazed. "I love the construction business and I feel I'm a very capable driver."

What's more, she earns $19.01 an hour, nearly four times what she made in previous jobs harvesting potatoes, waiting on tables, or flipping hamburgers. The extra income has enabled her to buy new school clothes for her two daughters, repair her trailer home, and stop worrying about where their next meal is coming from.

In the spring of 1992, Durham did not even know that jobs like hers were open to women. "I quit school to get married," she notes. "I just planned on being a housewife and mother." When she and her husband separated after 14 years of marriage, she went on public assistance to survive. Then, her welfare case worker told her about a new program to train women for jobs traditionally dominated by men, but now gradually opening to women. Having driven her husband's truck a few times, she thought the truck-driving course would be right for her. Three months later, she passed the test for a commercial driver's license. It proved to be her ticket out of the pink-collar ghetto.

Durham began her move out of poverty with the help of Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW). Working closely with local organizations and businesses, WOW gives technical assistance to job-training programs for low-income women in Milwaukee, Wis., and Hartford, Conn., as well as throughout Montana. Based in Washington, D.C., WOW has been active in female employment issues for more than 25 years. Its nontraditional training project aims to expand their access to dozens of lucrative industries once closed to them. Thanks to new Federal legislation, job-training programs are required to prepare women for higher-paying, nontraditional jobs. They are using WOW'S project as a model.

According to June Zeitlin, deputy director of the Rights and Social Justice program at the Ford Foundation, which has granted WOW $675,000, that project comes...