Taking the Floor at Ford: women in a man's world


Taking the Floor at Ford: In Conversation with Debbie Bacon and Lolly Gresty, former employees at Ford Transit Assembly Plant, Southampton, 23 October 2017. [This event was part of the SO: To Speak Festival]

“I feel I’ve been very fortunate to have been brought up in a time when girls were allowed to do whatever they wanted basically.  Just tap on the right door and make sure they let you in. And not give up.” [Debbie]

And she didn’t give up – not when she and her friends at school had to fight to be allowed to study technical drawing usually only offered to boys; not when Factories Act rules placed restrictions during her apprenticeship at Ford Dagenham; nor when she was faced with resentful male colleagues on becoming their supervisor. It was this resilience and determination that helped Debbie and other women like her to succeed in male-dominated workplaces in manufacturing and engineering.

These stories were the focus of our discussion at the packed-out event at Mettricks Old Town Café recently during which Debbie and Lolly shared and compared their very different experiences, while other women’s perspectives were added through audio clips from previously recorded oral history interviews.  

When Debbie started as an apprentice in the late 1970s she was the only female manufacturing technician apprentice in her batch, later becoming the first woman supervisor and Superintendent at the Dagenham assembly plant. Some of her early experiences were echoed in the audio extracts: starting in the 1980s, Nicola found the older men were reluctant to train her as they “thought that the women should be at home at the kitchen sink”. She found “it was a bit scary to start with but you have got to be a little bit mouthy as well”.

Lolly who joined Ford in 2004, reflected on how different her time working on the production line had been. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, the camaraderie and banter made her feel welcomed and totally accepted by her male colleagues. Sexism and racism were considered unacceptable and could result in someone losing their job. Lolly was struck by how much she and her generation of women took these equalities and working conditions for granted as she paid tribute to the women like the sewing machinists at Dagenham who had gone on strike to get equal pay and a recognition of their skilled work. She also recognised the role that women like Debbie had played as role models for others, some of whom, like Claire went on to do apprenticeships and felt encouraged to become supervisors.

Over the past 30 years, changes in labour laws, hard-won rights from women’s campaigns, and a major shift in social attitudes have paved the way for more women to enter and succeed in technical and manufacturing roles. By the time the Ford Transit plant in Southampton closed down in 2013, there were more women working on the shop floor, and as supervisors and senior managers, and who took equal pay, career progression and professional recognition for granted. 

Written by Padmini Broomfield

Some Tweets reporting on the discussions:








As a woman supervisor said, 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ford Transition Pop-up Museum (3rd - 9th April 2018)

Image
Ford Transition Pop-up Museum Tuesday 3rd - Monday 9th April 2018 Venue: Ford Vehicle Repair Centre, Swaythling, Southampton SO18 2NQ Free Entry. Booking essential Book at www.ticketsource.co.uk/ford-transition  The story of one industrial site's transition from making to moving as told through the voices of the men and women who worked there. The sights, sounds and voices trace the site's evolving manufacturing history from WW2 aviation to the production of the iconic 'white van' Transit, and its current transformation into a high-tech logistics park.  Come and find out about what it was like to work on the production line of a busy factory.   Open for one week only, the pop-up museum also offers a rare chance to see the last Transit van to be made in Southampton & signed by those who built it.   Over the past year, TRANSITION: from fields to Ford and beyond , a community history project funded by the Heritage Lotter...
Read more

Who bombed Cunliffe Owen? The intriguing story of the bombing in 1940 of the aircraft factory in Southampton

Image
Andy Jones, former director at Solent Sky Museum, Southampton, kept the audience at our memory sharing café enthralled as he shared the results of his research into the bombing of Cunliffe Owen during the Second World War. On 11 th September 1940 the factory took a direct hit from German bombers and 52 people lost their lives. It is a lesser-known story than the bombing of the Supermarine later that month and one that our project has been exploring through the memories of Helen, whose father was one of those killed. Andy and his team have been researching the story for a film due to be broadcast later this month and which looks at the mystery of a German bomber known to have been inside the factory at the time of the bombing. Andy showed photographs of the Heinkel at the factory taken before and after the raid and explained his efforts to identify the plane and through it find out more about its journey to Southampton. He has since pieced together the plane’...
Read more

Flying wheelchairs, wi-fi clothes, cancer cures and world peace – Life in 2067 as imagined by young people

Image
‘Bubble-powered rocket boots’, ‘teleporting devices’, ‘talking animals’ – just some of the future innovations as imagined by Year 6 pupils at Mansbridge Primary School at a session led by the Ford Transition project team and volunteers. It was the culmination of a series of workshops in which the children explored the history of the former Ford site and their thoughts and views on living in Mansbridge and Swaythling. In earlier sessions the children had studied archival resources such maps, documents, news cuttings and oral history quotes to look at how the site had changed over time – from fields to the Cunliffe-Owen aircraft factory during the Second World War, and then Ford Transit van production to the rapidly transforming new site today. They brushed up on their skills of asking questions, active listening and engaging with older people in a reminiscence context. So they were fully prepared and eager to find out more when they visited a local sheltered housing block and met olde...
Read more