• 1990 – Stopcocks Woman Plumber was founded by Hattie Hasan because, despite her qualifications, aptitude and skills, she was unable to get a job as a plumber. Hattie’s business was highly successful but she wanted to achieve something more.
• 2006 – Hattie created Stopcocks’ first website. Immediately she started receiving emails from women who wanted to become plumbers and were finding many obstacles in their paths.
• 2010 – Because plumbing had been her route to a self-determined life, Hattie published The Joy of Plumbing; a guide to living the life you really Really want https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Joy-Plumbing-Guide-Living-Life-Really-Want/1907722092
• 2011 – Stopcocks Women Plumbers launched to help other women become plumbers and to enable customers to find a great woman plumber in their area.
• 2012 – 2016 – This period was spent helping women to become fully qualified as plumbers and building the Stopcocks’ name.
• 2017 – Launch of Stopcocks Women Plumbers Franchise and first Women Installers Together conference

For information about WIT Conferences please go to Women Installers Together.

Based on what many of our customers tell us, we believe they are not receiving basic respect from tradespeople who visit their homes. Nobody likes great big dirty boots all over their carpet! Nor do we want tradespeople who patronise us, play loud music, thoughtlessly make themselves at home in our space, and make us feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

When you let a Stopcocks Woman Plumber or any tradeswoman from the Register of Tradeswomen CIC into your home you can rest assured that she will treat your property and your time with respect. She will listen to you, explain the problem and her solution clearly and answer your questions, without making assumptions or talking down to you.

Excellent customer service is an integral part of our service.

When women become plumbers, in addition to their skills for motherhood, they add ‘dad skills’ to this – being strong, capable and solution focussed, and ‘fixing stuff’.

So women plumbers bring a combination of Mother and Father archetypes into our home – in essence, they have all the traits of a superhero!

Women Installers Together Conferences are also addressing some of the industry issues around the ‘skills gap’. We believe that making the industry attractive and welcoming to women will increase its attractiveness to everyone, making it more a aspirational industry to work in.

And when we’re asked questions about whether women will ‘mind’ such a dirty job as plumbing – again we point to motherhood.

Unfortunately, nobody currently gathers this data but the estimate is that one in every hundred plumbers is a woman. And that there are around 500 (out of 100,000) gas engineers.

One of the aims of the Register of Tradeswomen CIC is to count tradeswomen nationally and use the data to drive change in our industries.

Stopcocks has enabled at least 30 women to qualify as plumbers since 2012. Many have gone on to jobs. Stopcocks Business Incubator Scheme never has more than 5 women on it to ensure a high quality of mentoring. The Register of Tradeswomen is available for householders to find skilled tradeswomen anywhere in UK.

Finding training is difficult enough (information is all biased towards the need of male school leavers) and women and girls who succeed in finding places often experience discrimination and even bullying while they are learning. After this, many women find it exceptionally difficult to secure a placement (in order to fully qualify) in the business, because many male-led companies are reluctant to employ them or send them out to work with customers. Which is ironic really, given how many customers tell us that they’d love to have a woman plumber working in their home…

The difficulties women and girls experience gaining placements and apprenticeships is not only down to sexism. The vast majority of plumbing companies, especially those concentrating on domestic work, are very small and simply cannot ‘absorb’ trainees who are unable to contribute to the businesses income, even if there is someone working there with teaching skills. It’s our opinion that this contributes to the inadequate numbers of qualified plumbers and also to the work practises being passed on to many new plumbers.

But there are also many practical issues which hinder women from getting a foothold in the industry. It is extremely difficult to get steel toe capped work boots and gloves in sizes small enough for many women (and these are a safety requirement for training and many manual jobs). There is even often a lack of adequate toilet facilities for women in the workplace and on building sites.

We have pages that describe our process and requirements to join our Business Incubator Scheme, use the Become a Plumber button.

In October 2015 Hattie Hasan, Stopcocks’ founder, travelled to Meru County (all self-funded) and worked with members of the community in Kithoka, particularly several women. She collaborated with them to devise and create a rainwater harvesting system using cheap, easily available materials and simple, sustainable methods. This system now harvests 40,000 litres of rain a year, halving the cost of the homes’ water bills.

Hattie maintains a connection with KACH and also IPI (which set up KACH) Stopcocks are now developing connections with Plumbers Without Borders, a global organisation which matches volunteer plumbers and water projects.

Stopcocks are collaborating with iFundi in Nairobi to improve the standards, training and reputation of plumbers.

For more details and to arrange comment or interview contact us mica@stopcocks.uk or call Mica on 07706 763883