Women in industry share opportunities with high school students

When female high school students dream about the futures, Coastal Bend companies and schools want girls to know that opportunities exist for them in industries that are currently male dominated.

Through the efforts of current women in industry, hundreds of female high school students had the opportunity this month to connect with potential employers and educational institutions.

On Thursday, This One’s For the Gals hosted the 2024 Coastal Bend Women in Industry Conference in Robstown, inviting students to learn about careers in construction, energy and manufacturing. Last week, companies like Chemours and Gulf Coast Growth Ventures provided funding for groups from local schools to attend the POWER Women in Industry Conference in Galveston.

“It’s not just on-the-ground positions,” This Ones For the Gals founder Stephanie Hajducek said during the Coastal Bend conference. “I like to say, whether you want to put on a hard hat and steel-toes or a business suit and stilettos, we’re going to help you find a place in the workforce.”

This Ones For the Gals began after Hajducek attended the Galveston conference, which is only seven years old. Loving the experience, Hajducek started fundraising to bring Coastal Bend students to the conference.

“It started with me thinking I could get maybe 10 or 12 girls,” Hajducek said. “It ended up with me getting 200 girls to that conference the very first year I tried (2021).”

The interest from local students and the support from industrial partners showed Hajducek that conversations about women in industry were overdue.

“When life doesn’t turn out the way you think it will, instead of being scared, you’re going to be prepared,” Hajducek said. “You’re going to have a skill set, you’re going to have a career and you’re going to keep moving forward no matter what.”

In 2022, This Ones For the Gals launched the Coastal Bend conference.

“If you tell a girl what’s out there for her, she’s going to go get it,” Hajducek said.

On Thursday, Hajducek shared her story with attendees, explaining how she didn’t know what she wanted to do when she graduated high school. She married and started a family, but she didn’t have any post-secondary education or training.

“Don’t be like Stephanie,” Hajducek said. “Have a plan, whatever that is.”

After her divorce, she had to figure out how to support her children. A friend suggested she learn AutoCAD drafting. She attended a six-week course and then a Bechtel job fair.

All she had was a “feeble” resume and her AutoCAD certificate, but she was willing to learn. She was offered an entry-level job that launched a career in industry.

“It changed everything that I thought it was to be an adult, to have a career and join the workforce,” Hajducek said.

Coastal Bend students share perspectives on careers in industry

Students from 30 high schools attended the Coastal Bend conference.

“It’s so amazing,” King High School junior Karlene Cascio said. “It’s so cool to see women here.”

Many student attendees weren’t sure what they wanted to do, but appreciated hearing from women in leadership positions. Taft High School seniors Caylee Castillo, Mariah Rodriguez, Jolina Encinia and Jazlyn Narvaez said that the message to not give up and to build up to their goals was interesting.

“I like that it gives us a lot of opportunities for when we’re done with school,” Castillo said.

Among the conference’s volunteers were Del Mar College students. Liv Garcia, Sam Marin and Mia Aguinaga all attended King High School, where they participated in a dual credit welding program. Today, they are studying welding at Del Mar College.

“I thought, what the heck, let’s just try it out,” Marin said. “I didn’t expect to like it, but I ended up loving it. I brought as many girls as I could in with me.”

Marin convinced Garcia and Aguinaga to start welding in high school.

“She was our guinea pig,” Aguinaga said.

Garcia enjoyed the hands-on part of welding and the competition. Aguinaga fell in love with working outdoors.

“The second I put those ear plugs in, everything was just quiet, and I was able to create things with my own hands that I never thought was possible,” Marin said.

All three are now eyeing careers in industry when they finish their studies. They met Hajducek, founder of This One’s For the Gals, at Del Mar College’s Día de Los Muertos welding competition.

“She had this bright pink booth and it immediately just attracted me,” Marin said.

It can be intimidating being in a male-dominated field, they said. But seeing women succeeding and supporting other women takes away some of that intimidation.

“There’s not a lot of women that want to do the stuff that we do,” Aguinaga said. “It’s very encouraging to have so much support from other women.”

There are times when male students have underestimated them, Aguinaga said, but with welding, the final product can speak for itself.

“When I first started out, I had a lot of opposition from guys to the point where one even asked, ‘Do you even weld?’” Marin said. “All I had to do was show him my piece and he was quiet and walked away.”

Instructors have also been encouraging, they said.

“I had an instructor that would always tell me that I had what it took and that he was going to make a welder out of me,” Marin said.

Ingleside High School didn’t attend the Coastal Bend conference due to testing conflicts, but it has attended the Coastal Bend Conference in the past and sent a group of students to the conference in Galveston earlier this month.

Ingleside High School principal Steven Edlin said that before This Ones For the Gals, there wasn’t much locally focused specifically on encouraging female students.

As industry partners have begun funding conference visits, his school has formed closer connections with employers in other areas as well. This has resulted in opportunities for all students, including plant visits and mock interview events that have resulted in tentative job offers for Ingleside students.

Edlin said that educators should encourage students regardless of gender. As a former band director, Edlin recalls how sometimes parents might discourage a boy from playing the flute or a girl from playing tuba.

“But you should do what you want to do and what makes you happy,” Edlin said.

And in the Coastal Bend, some of the best career opportunities exist in industry. Schools across the region have invested heavily in career and technical education programs.

According data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, across the U.S. women’s weekly earnings were only 83% of men’s earnings in 2022. The median usual weekly earnings for Texas women in 2022 were $916, while the median weekly earnings for male workers was $1,103.

The percentage of women’s earnings compared to men’s increased in the U.S. between the 1980s and early 2000s, but has remained between 80% and 83% since 2004.

In 2022, only about 1% of women worked in natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations, compared to 16.5% of male workers. About 7% of women worked in production, transportation and material moving occupations, compared to nearly 19% of men.

About 32% of women worked in professional and related occupations, compared to 22% of men – but a much smaller proportion of women were employed in higher paying jobs in the this category. In the professional and related occupations category, about 12 percent of women were employed in relatively high-paying computer, mathematical, architecture and engineering positions, compared with 49 percent of men.

At the Galveston conference, which brings together over 1,000 attendees, Ingleside High School senior Makayla Howard was looking for women empowerment. Senior Molly Marek is eyeing a career in the electrical field, while junior Cleo Adame is in the welding program.

When she started welding, Adame was the only female student in her class. This year, there’s another. Marek, who moved into Ingleside High School, previously attended a welding class at another school where there were few female welding students.

“I took a lot away,” Marek said about the Galveston conference. “Each company had a setup, so I got to talk to them a lot. A lot of people there weren’t in high school, and they were putting their resumes out and getting jobs on the spot.”

Women in industry share insights at Coastal Bend conference

At the Coastal Bend event, representatives of This One’s For the Gals’s industry partners, including LyondellBasell, Valero, Cheniere, HDR, AEP Texas and Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, spoke during a panel discussion, sharing why their companies would like to see more women in the workforce. Other panels featured women in industry.

At the event’s career and education expos, many of the booths were staffed by women.

“Women make up 50% of the world population,” Cheniere vice president of operations support Nishita Singh said. “If you’re not in the workforce, I’m losing out on 50% of the intellectual capacity that I can have.”

Singh said that she was encouraged by others in her life, and she believes it is important to give back.

“If each of us can bring one or two more women along, soon we will be 50% of the workforce in these industries,” Singh said.

Karen Muehlbauer, a technical director at Valero, said that she often hears from female engineers that they were inspired to become an engineer because they had a family member or a close friend who was an engineer.

Engineering is a career that can support a women’s family and lifestyle, Muehlbauer said.

“I just want to give other women that opportunity and that exposure because I was fortunate I had it in my family, but for those who don’t, it’s not a career you see every day growing up,” Muehlbauer said.

Alicia Matus, a site manager at LyondellBasell said that it’s important for women in industry to have role models.

“We need to see people that are also moms or wives if that’s what they choose to be and learn what it’s like to have to balance family and career in a highly demanding job,” Matus said.

Women bring diversity of thought to the table, Singh and Matus agreed.

“I think having women in leadership roles, we create a culture, and we craft policies that bring us things like flexible working hours or maternity leave,” Matus said. “Our company expanded to paternity leave for men as well. I truly believe that women press for those things because they understand what it’s lake and they want equality for both men and women and they want to create policies that create a better culture and environment for all employees.”

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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Coastal Bend girls eye futures in male-dominated industries