CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — The welding competition portion of the Nueces County Junior Livestock show featured several area high school students among the welders this year, including a few girls.
Even though fields like welding tend to be male-dominated, there are plenty of strong women paving the way for the evolving industry.
"I've been welding for four years. This is my last year in high school. Now, what I like about welding is being able to weld and kind of be good at it, I can say. But I don't know, it's just a different world when you're under that hood and striking that arch. I would say my first two years in welding, it was actually pretty hard. I was always picked on but I just felt like the guys were kind of making fun of me or whatever, saying, 'Oh, she ain't even going to be good.' But now, it's like they kind of look at me and ask for help," said Larissa Pena, Senior at A.C. Jones High School in Beeville.
The welding skills the girls learned throughout the semester will undoubtedly open doors to potential employment opportunities, empowering the young women to shape their futures.
"I've been doing welding for two years now. This is my second year. It's fun. It doesn't take a whole bunch of work as long as you have the hard work. And that's what I really like about it. I want to work at my brother's oil company, Industrial Fabrication, just because that would be a good place for me to learn and get more experience before I go off to the refinery, which is what I really want to do. I think that the women in the industry right now, I feel like they're going to do well enough to where it's going to push all that away" said Marisa Cortez, Ray High School Senior.
Marisa Cortez said she hopes that more women will enter the field in the near future and continue to defy stereotypes.
Photojournalist Manny Venegas contributed to this story.
