Manufacturing: Not just a man's job

By Parija Kavilanz @CNNMoney

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - April Senase is at the front end of a potential job boom: women in manufacturing.

Senase, 35, is a trailblazer. She has worked numerous factory jobs for 13 years - often as the first, or only, woman on the production floor. She makes nearly $40 an hour, with overtime, in her day job running high-tech machinery at a factory that makes specialized industrial parts.

And in March, she took a second job as the first female instructor in computer-aided machining at Symbol Job Training Inc., a trade school that sits in the heart of a busy manufacturing hub in Skokie, Ill.

In her new role, she hopes to inspire more women to follow her lead.

According to the National Association of Manufacturers, about a third of all manufacturing workers today are women.

But manufacturing is rapidly being transformed from a labor-intensive field to a high-tech one. The change, and a nascent pick up in domestic manufacturing, has created thousands of factory jobs nationwide that, experts say, more women are starting to seek out.

"Women are very detailed-oriented," said Senase. "You need that approach in manufacturing today because the work is so much more precise."

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