Learning about lead paint removal and getting to dress the part are from left: Kendra Quimby, 12, Deering Middle School, Sarah Langlais, 11, Deering Middle School and Nicole Plas, 10 Horgan Elementary School.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

CRANSTON — Their mothers work mostly as nurses, teachers and child-care providers: jobs traditionally dominated by women. So, it’s no surprise these girls had never pictured themselves working as carpenters, electricians or welders — jobs which typically pay more.

Thinking beyond the traditional gender divide is why about 125 girls from around Rhode Island yesterday donned hardhats and worked alongside professional welders, plumbers, carpenters and asbestos-removal technicians at the Second Annual Girls Non-Traditional Trades Event at the New England Laborers Construction Career Academy on Sharpe Drive.

The six-hour event, sponsored by the Rhode Island Commission on Women, was about more than breaking gender stereotypes. Nearly one-third of all female-headed households in Rhode Island live below the poverty level, compared with only 5 percent of male-headed households, according to a flier entitled “Jobs, Gender and Poverty: What Every Girl Should Know,” which quoted federal government data.

The event drew girls from Girl Scout and Brownie troops to Big Sister organizations. The demonstrations were primarily geared to middle- and high-school-age girls, though some of the participants were as young as 8.

Inside a cavernous building with dirt floors yesterday, hammers banged, welding torches spewed fire and instructors demonstrated tasks that ranged from hammering a straight nail to wielding a blow torch and hanging protective plastic in preparation for asbestos removal.

At the plumbing station, 11-year-old Sarah Langlais and her friend Samantha Betteze grabbed ahold of a large wrench and learned how to drill and tap a live water main.

Langlais’ mother works as a cook and cashier in a pizza parlor; her father works in a lighting store. Though Langlais can shimmy up a rope as well as any of the boys in school, she said, she’d never pictured herself doing a construction job.

“Maybe after this,” she said, “I will.”

A few yards away, a welding instructor showed 13-year-old Savanna Wilson how to use a blow torch to burn her name into a steel plate.

“That’s fun,” she said, pulling off her mask. “I thought it was gonna be hard, but it’s really easy.”

Her 18-year-old brother was a student at the Career Academy, she said, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to follow his lead. Her mother works at a health-care organization; her father designs radiant heating systems. Wilson, of North Scituate, knows that she doesn’t want to “sit behind a desk,” but she’s not sure about construction. “I like to cook,” she said. Her last creation was a devil’s cheese cake for her mother.

Nearby, Vicki Kearns instructed a group of about 15 girls wearing head-to-toe protective clothing about how to put on a respirator mask. Kearns, who is 41, has a graduate degree in managerial technology from Johnson & Wales University and she used to manage restaurants and nightclubs. She’d never considered a career in construction, she said, until she got into a car accident. Afterward, the husband of the woman who hit Kearns’ car wound up offering Kearns a job at his asbestos-removal company. Now, she runs her own company where she has 15 employees — all of them men.

“I don’t think construction on any end is marketed to women,” she said. The fact that the field is dominated by men, she said, also makes it harder for women to break in. “You can see their intimidation,” she said. “When you’re in a men’s industry, you think the cards are stacked against you.”

But Kearns, of Warwick, said she never had a problem with her male coworkers. And her relationship with the men who work for her, she said, has always been positive. And she can still wear the crystal studded earrings she bought from Cohoes because, she said, “in this business, you need something to give you a little bit of femininity.”

(The Career Academy, the Laborers’ Union and 17 other partners, including Gilbane Building Co., which provided a video on safety, sponsored the event.)

larditi@projo.com