"It's too girlie," Hernandez said, standing in the dusty auto body shop at the school last week. "I'd feel like an old lady doing sewing."

Hernandez, 17, majors in auto body repair and is part of a growing population of young women flooding the state's vocational schools locally and across the state - and doing jobs traditionally held by men.

Local vocational schools, including Essex Agricultural and Technical High School in Danvers, North Shore Technical High in Middleton and Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High in Haverhill, have all seen between a 6 and 15 percent jump in female enrollment in the last 10 years.

Greater Lawrence Technical School in Andover has seen a 3.7 percent jump in a decade.

The top two seniors at Whittier are girls in the electrical technologies program - Katie Grenier and Krystle Brunette, both 17.

Boys have the brawn, the petite girls said. But the gals outpace the guys everywhere else.

"We dominate the shop," Brunette said.

When Dick Barbeau started teaching at Essex Aggie in 1973, there were only two girls in the senior class. This year, girls make up more than 70 percent of the student body - evidence of a trend sweeping vocational schools across the North Shore and the state.

"I don't know if there's a male-dominated major left at our school," said Barbeau, principal of Essex Aggie. "It's at least 50-50 in the majors that used to be predominantly male."

More girls aren't just attending vocational school, they are also studying nontraditional fields.

"We have girls in the new electrical program, and carpentry and masonry - that's something you didn't see five or six years ago," said Amelia O'Malley, superintendent of North Shore Tech.

Now, female students are majoring in fields like auto body, graphic design, forestry and natural resources, like Melanie Zarella, a junior at North Shore Tech studying collision repair.

"I've always wanted to do collision," said Zarella, 16, of Beverly. "There are a lot of complicated things people don't realize."

Zarella is one of only four girls at the school majoring in collision. And it is still a tough world out there for women looking for work in some of these fields, said Tom Duda, who has taught collision repair at North Shore Tech the last 18 years.

"I've had some girls who couldn't get jobs because people look at them as a female, not as a technician," Duda said. "It's a lot better now, (but) the girls realistically do have to perform harder. The same shops will give them a harder time, and they really have to prove themselves."

Times are a changin'

Technology and academics may also be enticing more girls to vocational schools. Vocational teachers say they have more college prep students than before.

"There are more (students) doing both - going to college and going to work," said Karen Sarkisian, superintendent of Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School in Haverhill. "More students are learning a technical skill and using that to pay for college."

Shannon Lane, a senior at Essex Aggie majoring in natural resources, wants to go to college to learn landscape architecture and dreams of starting her own firm one day. Lauren Holz is a sophomore at Essex Aggie majoring in animal science; she wants to become a veterinarian.

"I thought by coming here, I would have a better chance of getting into some of the more agricultural colleges," said Holz, 15, of Danvers.

O'Malley has noted a boost in girls at North Shore Tech since standardized testing forced all schools to become more academically focused.

"The curriculum frameworks changed everything in Massachusetts, and there's much more of an emphasis on academics now," said O'Malley, who has worked at North Shore Tech nearly 20 years.

"Students are now much better prepared in ninth grade than when they arrived here in the past, when there were students who couldn't read at their grade level or write essays. That just doesn't happen anymore."

Rapidly changing technology influences everything, Sarkisian said.

"Years ago, a student would learn to be a plumber or an electrician and do it," Sarkisian said. "Since technology has increased, there's a continuing need for people to be updated. Now with computers and healthcare, everything is changing."

Got girls?

Even though the federal government enacted laws, such as Title IX, mandating gender equity in the early 1970s, vocational schools took time to see a shift.

"Over the last 30 years, there have been major state and federal initiatives to make those (changes at vocational schools)," said Nate Mackinnon, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Education. He said the DOE sponsors multiple seminars on the subject annually.

"A lot of it's been education for vocational educators, to ensure it's not just male-focused," he said. "There hasn't been any huge, overnight change. It takes time. It's been gradual, but it's steadily increasing."

And a school like Essex Aggie, which is somewhat of an anomaly, is even starting to swing in the other direction.

"Early in my career here, we couldn't field teams in basketball and cross country because we couldn't get enough girls," Barbeau said. "Now it's almost flip-flopped."

Woman's world

Vocational educators like Donna Costa still see room for improvement.

Costa, a teacher at Peabody High School, was the first woman in the state to become certified to teach electronics. Today, she still battles to get girls to study similar vocational majors.

"I just think males at young ages are pushed into math and science, where females aren't," Costa said. "It's a constant push if you want to go into a nontraditional area."

She was excited to see two freshmen girls in Peabody High's vocational program this year majoring in electronics, learning to repair and build computers. Melynda McKechnie, 14, and Filida Seeley, 15, are the only girls in their class.

"I like it a lot," McKechnie said.

"I'm going to probably continue electronics and start my own electronics company," Seeley said.

They stick together and love working on proto boards and learning circuitry.

"I've never had two together, starting out like this," Costa said. "I like that they support each other."

"(Electronics) is a fabulous field for women," she continued. "If you're in auto body or carpentry, there is a lot of lifting heavy stuff, and let's face it, that limits some girls. But with electronics, there are so many jobs in engineering for women, because you use your brain more than your muscles."

Katherine McParland, a sophomore studying carpentry at Whittier, can't wait to have a trade and views it as a tool to help her through life.

"I thought it would be really helpful toward my career after high school," said McParland, 15, of Ipswich. "It's a good way to make money, and I'd probably take a carpentry job to help pay for college.

"I like the fact that I get to learn a trade."

THEN AND NOW

Percentage of the students at local vocational schools who are girls*

1995 2006

Essex Aggie 55.9 70.7

North Shore Tech 29.3 35.9

Whittier 39.8 45.7

Greater Lawrence 44.6 48.3

* Information provided by the Department of Education

Katie Grenier

Age: 17

School: Whittier Vocational Technical School

Home: Bradford

Major: Electrical technologies

Aspiration: Attend college for engineering, may work to get electrical license.

Current rank in senior class: Second

What's best about vocational school? You get to choose what you want to do.

Why did you choose electronics? I stuck (the names) of all the shops in a bag. I pulled three times. Electrical came up all three times.

Krystle Brunette

Age: 17

School: Whittier

Home: Lawrence

Major: Electrical technologies

Aspiration: College for criminal justice

Current rank in the senior class: First

What do your parents think of your choices? They think it's pretty cool ... they're proud of me.

Have you ever been shocked? No, actually, I have not.

Darlene Brito

Age: 18

School: Greater Lawrence Technical School

Home: Lawrence

Major: Auto body

Aspiration: Translator or a job in auto body

College: Plans to attend Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill

Why auto body: I love working on cars. I can do it myself without anyone else to help me.

Jessica Manfrate

Age: 17

School: Greater Lawrence Technical School

Home: Lawrence

Major: Auto body

Aspiration: To own her own body shop

Why auto body? I like working on cars, mostly. It's something I enjoy doing.

Are you a car artist? We mix paint and paint it. To fix a dent, it takes a lot of skills to do it the right way.

Chantel Hernandez

Age: 17

School: Greater Lawrence Technical School

Home: Lawrence

Major: Auto body

Aspiration: To own a body shop

Why auto body? It's hands on. I can do stuff on my own without having to pay for it.