MARCIE CANTU knew she would need to get a good-paying job with health insurance to get off welfare
    She used to be a secretary, but it didn't pay enough to support her three young sons.
    So Cantu, a single mother, signed up for a program in Houston that teaches women job skills so they can get highpaying positions that traditionally have gone to men. Canto plans to start working August as a $9-an-hour meter reader for HL&P.
    To prepare, Canto, who got as far as he seventh grade, is walking three miles a day to get up to the seven miles a day that she'll have to walk on her new job.
    "I want a better job than flipping hamburgers," said Cantu, who also is studying or a high school equivalency certificate.
    Out of a converted house in north Houson, Women Helping Women is teaching displaced homemakers, battered women and welfare recipients the necessary job skills to work in positions that traditionally have gone to men.
    So far, 22 women have signed up for the 1-week program funded by the Texas Workforce Commission. Women Helping Women can accommodate 50 women and takes most of its referrals from women's shelters and food pantries.
    The women recently completed a forklift nurse - which included how to drive, top and back up - and they will eventually build a small structure to practice new construction skills that include carpentry, electrical work, roofing and drywalling

Driven to succeed

    Carolyn Wissel, owner of Houston Flaglady, a provider of flag holders who divert traffic around construction sites, has hired several women from Women Helping Women. She pays $10 an hour and for several women, the job has allowed them a way to escape their violent husbands.
    While it's a good wage for casual work - you don't work if it rains - workers can earn $500 a week But the conditions aren't easy - it can be 130 to 140 degrees whey, asphalt is being laid.
    "Your ears burn, your nose burns," she said, wearing an orange vest and holding her flag at a local construction site.
    The Pepsi-Cola Bottling Group in Houston has hired a dozen women from the project for warehouse night loaders (they load cases onto a pallet, secure the load and move it onto tractor-trailers at night) and merchandisers (they stock grocery store shelves and build in-store displays).
    It's very labor-intensive work that traditionally has been done by men, said Freddie Franklin, human resources manager. But the bottler decided to try to diversify its work force and expanded the source of job applicants.
    The women are driven to succeed, Franklin said, adding that the group's most efficient loader is a woman.
    And the jobs,' which pay $9.61 an hour for the loaders and between $8.35 and $14.85 for the merchandisers, come with a full range of benefits, including medical, retirement, stock options and fertility assistance.

Tattoos are no problem

    The trades are really good for women, said Faye Turner, the group's founder. In these fields, it doesn't matter if you've had some hard knocks in your life. Or if you've made some mistakes. Or if you have too many tattoos, Turner said.
    "They like tattoos," said Turner, with a laugh.
    Turner, who had no job skills when she got married, learned sign painting when her husband got sick and they faced foreclosure on their house.
    For a variety of reasons, women have been shut out of many of the higherpaying jobs that traditionally have gone to men, such as construction and heavy manufacturing, even though they don't require a lot of education or training.
    Sometimes, it's just tradition - the job always has been done by men. Other times, an employer believes women can't lift the loads required. Or maybe believes a woman is too emotional for the job.
    When women don't have many skills, it's not so easy to break out of that female wage ghetto. But for the ones who do, it can be a way out of a life based on bare subsistence.
    Michelle Shipes, for example, hopes to pick up the skills she'll need to launch a construction engineering career.
    Shipes, a 21-year-old single mother with three children under the age of 5, quit her job at Kmart recently and hopes she'll learn enough to eventually end up with a $16- to $18-an-hour job.