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20
Jan 2024
Starbeck's female plumber who is breaking down barriers
Elisa Foyle is at a customer’s home in Pannal trying to find a leak in the bathroom while we chat on the phone.
She’s doing a day of small plumbing jobs and is so busy she asks if I mind her working while we talk. Since launching her business, PlumbMum, three years ago, she’s hasn’t advertised once and yet the phone never stops ringing.
Elisa, from Starbeck, is among the tiny proportion of female plumbers in the UK.
Data from the Office of National Statistics shows that in 2022 the number of women working in plumbing was 3,500, just 2.5 per cent of the industry’s workforce. Although up on 2021 figures of 2,700 (1.9 per cent), it’s still shockingly low.
Boob-related comments
It would be easy to think women are facing too many barriers in a traditionally male-orientated industry, but Elisa’s general experience has actually been very positive. She says:
Mid-life career change
In fact, the biggest barrier for Elisa was nothing to do with being a woman; it was the lack of practical on-the-job experience she was able to access after her college course.
A single mum to three boys, now aged 9, 17 and 18, she was 42 when she decided to switch careers after her work as a frontline healthcare professional began affecting her mental health and time with her family. She took on cleaning and caring work to pay the bills through her college course, but this would have been unsustainable had she moved on to an apprenticeship after her studies. She says:
Elisa saw no other option than to just start doing the job and learn as she went along. Surprisingly, one of her biggest challenges was knowing the language used for all the tools and parts, especially when visiting trade suppliers.
After her first customer left a glowing review on the Nextdoor app, her work snowballed. She now offers a variety of services including general plumbing, taps and drainage work, bathroom installation and repair, and emergency call-outs.
She works alongside a professional tiler, joiner and handyman as well as passing on gas-related boiler work to trusted engineers. She recently received a ‘Neighbourhood Fave’ award from Nextdoor for being one of the most popular businesses on the app.
"The barriers shouldn't stop you"
Although wary of gender stereotypes, Elisa has found that being a female plumber sometimes works to her advantage:
Elisa is now planning to use her experience to help others. She’s hoping to put aside a day a week to offer practical experience to someone, whatever their gender, in mid-life who is retraining as a plumber. She’d also like to set up a course teaching people basic plumbing skills, after spotting a need particularly among her female customers to feel confident and empowered in fixing small plumbing issues around the home.
Now 47, Elisa laughs when I suggest she’s an inspiration, and not just for being a woman in a male-dominated industry. That in itself would be challenging enough. But doing it mid-life as a career change and also while a single mum to three boys? It’s not an easy thing to do. She replies:
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