Women Owning Manufacturing Companies?? -- Bring It! Says These 7 Amazing Entrepreneurs

Jennifer Bass, Owner of Essve Tech

The lines between male-dominated and female-dominated industries are slowly starting to fade -- thank goodness! Women and female entrepreneurs are now visible across non-traditional fields like engineering, construction, and manufacturing. CNN Money recently published an article about 7 amazing women who started their own manufacturing companies and are successfully running their own businesses.

• Kimberlie Gaarde and Brittnie Hammack - this mother-daughter team from San Diego went from what they called "two chicks and a processing factory" to 30 employees, selling their fresh cut fruit products to huge outlets like Sam's Club, Target and Walmart.
• Luconda Dager - is president of Velvet Ice Cream, a family business headquartered in Utica, Ohio. Her two sisters also work in the business, and Juconda is preparing her daughter to join the business.
• Severine Zygmont - co-founded her own company, Oxford Performance Materials, in 2000. The South Windsor, Connecticut-based company manufactures polymers for the biomedical, aerospace and defense industries. How's that for non-traditional??
• Jennifer Bass - owns Essve Tech, a manufacturer of corrugated steel pipes in Alpharetta, Georgia. When she bought the company in 2004, it never occurred to her that manufacturing wasn't for women.
• Alexis Miller - owns a uniform apparel manufacturing company, Regent Apparel, that was started by her grandfather in 1921. She and her two sisters run the business in San Francisco.
• Tracy Baker - heads the manufacturing operations of DIRTT, a Calgary, Alberta-based manufacturer of prefabricated interiors for corporate office, schools and health care facilities. The company now owns facilities in Canada; Savannah, Georgia;and Phoenix, Arizona. The company's sales have increased from $20 million a year to $140 million a year from 2006 to 2103.

What these 7 women have to say about women in manufacturing

• "I dabbled in each department: production, accounting, sales. I even rode with the drivers on the delivery route."
• "To get women interested in manufacturing, it has to start in school."
• "You have to get them (women) excited about science and math. There's no reason why women can't excel in this industry."
• "In school, I loved math and science. My teachers told me these subjects were as viable a career path as any other."
• "I welcome the challenge to be taken seriously."

Read more about these amazing women at money.cnn.com/gallery/smallbusiness/2014/06/04/women-manufacturing/index.html