Northumberland female welder shares experience of sexism and bullying in the workplace
She tells us why it is important to tackle the skills gap
A Northumberland female welder shares her experience of sexism and bullying in the workplace.
Melanie Stewart, 50, from Bedlington, Northumberland, says how she changed the name on her applications to sound more male, and faced a daily barrage of deeply offensive and sexist remarks, as she strived to thrive in her chosen career.
Although her worst experiences were back in the ‘90s, she tells us there is still room for improvement.
She said: "There was a lot of joking and stuff that went on in the workplace, but there is like a line you can cross when you know that it is going from a bit of a joke to full on sexism and stuff like that.
"I wanted a certain job to do, and I was told that I should just sweep the floor or should have been a hairdresser and that it wasn't a place for women.
"I did go in for a job once and I was told that there weren't too keen on hiring women because they didn't want to have to pay maternity.
"It’s happened a lot of times where they rang me up when I was applying for jobs and said ‘can I speak to Mel? Can I speak to your husband’, and I was like, no, that's me.
"They were like ‘oh’ and you know the voice straight away. It’s like here we go again.
"It was heartbreaking because I was like, I can do this job. Why am I being penalised because of my gender and I was absolutely devastated at the time. It nearly put me off to the point where I was thinking, should I change my career, should I go for something that's a bit less gender bias."