When you’re the first to do something, you’ll often find a lot of people who will try and stand in your way. That’s because you represent a change and if people are too comfortable with the status quo, that change can suddenly seem frightening to them.
Whether they’re right or wrong, most people find it difficult to adjust their views on how the world should work. That’s why if this happens, it’s usually gradual and while a watershed moment may have influenced that change, it rarely does so overnight.
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This is not to say that pioneers could go about what they do any differently than they would, but rather a forewarning that it may be awhile before some people accept them. And one British plumber is experiencing this reality in real time.
30-year-old Carly Gayle of Crewe, England has spent about half her life learning and honing her trade as a plumber.
As The Daily Mail reported , she would work with her dad during the weekends when she was 15 and it was through their time together that her skills and desire to become a plumber herself grew.
However, her dad didn’t want her to follow in his footsteps.
Although she wanted him to give her an apprenticeship, he refused at first. It wasn’t that he didn’t think she could do it, but there was a lot about the job that he didn’t want her to go through.
As Gayle said , “He didn’t really want me to go into the same industry as him because he knows it’s a hard life, it’s hard work, it’s a lot of responsibility and he knew I would get a lot of stick.'”
Nonetheless, Gayle set her sights on plumbing and graduated from trade college, where she was one of only two women in her 200-person program.
In the years since, she’s built her own business and said she makes the equivalent of about $47,000 a year.
But in that time, she’s also experienced a lot of incredulity and outright sexism from customers.
Customers often wouldn’t believe that she could do the job and questioned her qualifications, usually by asking, “Where’s the man?”
She also said guys would make comments like, “Don’t hurt yourself, darling,” when they saw her shopping for tools, but they usually stopped when she showed them her Gas Safe registration, which is required for many British tradespeople.
As Gayle told The Daily Mail , “The comments used to get to me, but they’re only served to make me really thick skinned. It’s definitely made me more feisty.”
Although these suspicious responses are common, Gayle’s skills have attracted a lot of demand, particularly among customers who are more comfortable with female tradespeople in their house.
This is sometimes true among other women, but she also finds that elderly clients often feel at ease around her, as do those who live alone and feel vulnerable.
Although these clients were often surprised to see her to see her as well, their surprise tended to be more pleasant.
As Gayle said , “I once had a woman tell me ‘you look like a model – I can’t believe you’re a plumber’.”
Although Gayle has seen improvement in how women are treated in plumbing, she said the industry is still a long way off from gender equality.
For the most part, the way for women to get into the business at all is for someone else to take them under their wing.
As she told the The Daily Mail , “For me, it was through my dad and that’s the same for a lot of women. They have just been lucky enough to have someone to support them with it, but there’s nothing really to encourage women to think that they can do anything like this.”
Gayle also isn’t lacking when it comes to support from home.
She said her husband, Danny, was really impressed that she was training to become a plumber when they met and early on in their relationship, he relied on her when something in the house needed fixing.
After they married, he started doing a lot of this on his own, as she had already taught him how.
As Gayle said, “Now his friends ring him up asking how to bleed a radiator, because they know I’ve shown him how.”
And of course, her passion for her career has kept her going through all of this, even if the work itself has its own challenges.
It requires intensive labor over long hours, but there are also smaller ways the job can be kind of annoying.
For instance, although Gayle enjoys getting her nails done, this isn’t something she can often do because they get in the way of handling screws or other small parts.
As she said, “So when I’m desperate to have them for a holiday or other occasion I have to duct tape them up.”
h/t: The Daily Mail
