In the press

The Observer - 29 February 2004

Girls in pursuit of the plumb jobs

Women are swapping the trading floor for a trade as a way of avoiding the nine-to-five treadmill, reports Anushka Asthana.

When Natalie Barnett told her mother she was going to become a plumber, she nearly cried: 'She stared at at me and said, "Oh my God, yo are going to spend your time with your trousers halfway down your backside, reading the Sun, sitting in a van, wolf-whistling at men and smoking roll-ups".'

At the time, Barnett was earning £35,000 a year trading for a power-generating company in Edinburgh. She was happy but wanted to move back to London.

'I had always fancied doing a trade, something useful that paid a good wage,' says 29-year-old Barnett. She decided to take up plumbing after finding an intensive six-week foundation course with a company called Step to Training.

'No one took me seriously,' she says. 'They thought I would do the course and move on.' Now she has completed the training and has a job as an apprentice in the capital, Barnett has earned the support of her family.

Her friends, most of whom are lawyers and City workers, have also come round to the idea. But when she first made the decision, there were a few raised eyebrows. 'It was because I was a girl and they all thought of plumbers as having their heads down a toilet the whole time,' she says. 'They had this idea I would become a big, butch character lugging pipes around.'

Despite stories of huge earnings plumbers can make, Barnett insists her motivation was not the money: 'We have been told the £70,000 figure is excessive. It is possible if you work seven days a week and always get good jobs, but I am not expecting that much.

'I just didn't want to join the crowds, to get on the Underground every morning and sit in front of a computer from nine to five. I am too fidgety for that.'

Barnett is one of the few women who make up just nine per cent of the construction industry. Plumbers, builders, painters, electricians, carpenters and others are predominantly men and stereotypes still hold strongly in society.

But now the Government, employers and trade organisations are working to try to increase the number of women entering the industry. And the results are starting to show. Across the country, women are clamouring to get on courses to learn a trade.

At Colchester Institute in Essex, one of the country's largest colleges for construction studies, the number of women enrolling nearly doubled this year.

The same trend has been seen in Northbrook College in West Sussex, where the European Social Fund sponsors women to take up training in its department of construction. Among those at North brook is 49-year-old Valerie Johnson, who is studying handcrafted furniture-making after spending 30 years as a care worker.

Johnson and Barnett are joining a competitive area. Nearly all the plumbing courses across the country have waiting lists, some as long as two years. In one college in Hornchurch, Essex, there were 1,000 applications for 75 places last year.

But the competition for courses should not deter women who are being offered more support to help the, into the industry.

The Construction Industry Training Board runs Steps Into Construction, which offers employers support to take women and ethnic minorities on for a six-week trial. So far, 200 women have come through the scheme.

The Institute of Plumbers also began 18 months ago to encourage women into the trade. Before the campaign, communications manager Carol Cannavan had never received a single query from a woman about the career; she has had hundreds since.

Efforts are also being made to entice younger women into the industry. At Colchester institute and Plymouth College for Further Education, in Devon, girls in their early teens are brought in from schools and encouraged to try out their skills.

The industry is becoming more appealing because it offers a practical and variable lifestyle and the opportunity to be self-employed and well paid. For some, it is worth giving up highly paid careers.

Last April, Kerrie Keeling was earning £60,000 plus bonuses as a vice-president in an investment bank. But she couldn't see a future in the job: 'I looked at the women above me and thought I didn't want to be like them. I wanted to work for myself.'

Keeling had always been interested in painting and decorating and gave up her job to set up in business. Her family and friends thought she was mad.

For two months, she worked alone decorating people's homes. Now her firm, A Woman's Touch, has a staff of four and she says the fact they are all female helps business. Less than a year later, Keeling has flexible working hours, adores her job and is just as financially comfortable as before.

But while there are success stories, there are still barriers.

'One of the obstacles is finding employers willing to take [women] on,' says Caroline Armstrong from Women and Manual Trades.

This frustration has hit 19-year-old Rebecca Boyington from Sheffield. After training for two years to become an electrician, she spent a year searching for work until returning to an office job.

And according to a book out this week, Women in Construction, the problem is rife. 'There are many more women training than will get in,' says Linda Clarke, on of the authors. 'The biggest barrier is the industry itself… it relies on networks or male gangs - people are employed in the pub or by those they know.'

The Government is working to encourage more women into these fields. Modern apprenticeships have been important in attracting members of both sexes into vocational fields and the Equal Opportunities Commission is set to make recommendations soon. And many employers are keen to attract women as some female customers prefer to have women in their houses. British Gas has worked to double the number of service engineers who are female. But that still only brings the total to 85 out of 7,000.