PB’s Edward Kelly talks to Mica May, Head of Development at Stopcocks, the national franchise of women plumbers, about the story behind the organisation and how it is supporting women in the trades
Stopcocks was founded in 1990 by CEO Hattie Hasan, who embarked upon a career in the plumbing industry after starting out as a primary school teacher. She found herself drawn to plumbing as she’d always loved the idea of fixing things and the freedom that came with it.
Mica has been with Stopcocks since 2014 and is the company’s Head of Development. She goes on to tell me more about Hattie and some of the early experiences that told her this wasn’t going to be the easiest career change for a woman in the late 1980s. Hattie studied her trade at the Leeds College of Building, where she became the first female trainee they’d had and even had to use the staff toilets as there were none for her.
Starting out
Hattie began employing herself and trying to take on jobs in her local community in Leeds all while day releasing herself into college. Still struggling to get work, and ever conscious of bills that needed paying, she approached a city magazine and, not having a mass of spare cash lying around, asked if they needed any plumbing work done in exchange for an advert in their magazine. As luck would have it, they did need something done and agreed. It was from then on that Hattie’s phone started ringing and never stopped. Customers appreciated the way Hattie worked and, as is the tried and tested method for a tradesperson, recommendations starting coming in.
After years in the trade, and only growing in success, Hattie realised she’d never actually met another woman plumber. This was the beginning of the internet, so she started a website, and soon found other women plumbers contacting her, who she met up with across the country.
Mica explains more: “funnily enough, hardly anybody else who were women working in the industry had met any other women doing it either. And so, that’s when Hattie started thinking, ‘well, probably part of the reason there are so few of us is because there are so few of us’. Because, if you never see anybody like you doing something, then it doesn’t make you feel like you can do it.”
“With all of society saying, ‘women don’t do things that mess up their nails’, and worse, of course, you have to be a very determined type of person to be able to continue on doing those sorts of things. So, as well as meeting other women, Hattie started looking at ways to enable other women to come into the industry.”
A helping hand
Hattie’s desire to help other women in the trades manifested itself into what Stopcocks Women Plumbers is now, a Business Incubation Scheme – helping women become successful self-employed plumbers through use of the Stopcocks brand and business support service.
Training courses, an engineer consultation service and DIY Club are all on the Stopcocks website too. The DIY Club is for all women householders, where exact home DIY tasks can be requested and then shown to the participant via a webinar.
The Register of Tradeswomen was also set up by the company and began as a one stop shop, connecting householders with tradeswomen. This provided the team at Stopcocks with the data that, even without promotion, the demand for tradeswomen is more than three times the supply available. Having established that, the Register of Tradeswomen is now focussing on providing training in DIY to survivors of abuse, which has already run very successfully and is collaborating with a national network of women’s organisations to distribute that training.
Events
Part of the organisation’s growth has led to an annual national event for tradeswomen in London that began in 2017. For the first time ever, there’s also a regional event taking place next month in February in Manchester, sponsored by Grundfos and AkzoNobel. The thought behind these events is to bring tradeswomen together. It’s no secret that ours is an industry that can be incredibly lonely, and that brings mental health issues with it. We’ve certainly discussed the horrifying suicide figures amongst male construction workers before. One can only imagine how difficult it must be for women in the industry who don’t really ever see anyone else in the same position as they are.
Having the opportunity for tradeswomen to meet up in this way seems invaluable. Mica tells me the events have spawned WhatsApp chats and several Facebook groups for tradeswomen, allowing for a space to discuss problems, ask for advice and even just know there are others out there in the same boat. Mica tells me that it is this work helping women isolated in the trades that got Hattie her MBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List.
To finish off, I ask Mica how more tradeswomen could help the construction industry as a whole. “It’s not a crowded market, and there’s a skills gap – there’s a massive, massive skills gap, in fact. When we talk to tradeswomen quite often, they are mystified why men in the industry see women coming into it as taking something away from them, because actually all it’s going to give them is a bit of headspace within the industry, because we just need more people and women are very, very keen to get involved in it.”
If you want to hear more about Stopcocks and listen to our interview with Mica, check out the latest episode of the Professional Builder Podcast here:
For more information on Stopcocks visit Home – Stopcocks.
