One thing for me was seeing the outfits
I’m Hannah, I go to Newcastle High School for Girls. I’m 16 and I’m currently studying 3 A Levels, geography, psychology and biology.
Image showing the outfits worn Image: IWM (Q 110076)
I thought one thing for me was seeing the outfits and that might not have been what everyone took away from it because it was very much centred around engineering, but I thought it was very cool seeing how in that time period it would have been very unlikely that women would have worn the typically masculine outfits without a reason and this was obviously a very, very good reason.
There would have been dresses, and everybody would have been conservative, and you weren’t dirty, you were clean. So to see that happening, obviously it was a very difficult time, but to see something positive come out of that because now we don’t always have to wear skirts and seeing that as a turning point that women are more than just skirts and dresses and being able to see these women building things and working and it being quite empowering to see women with dirt everywhere.
My grandad’s father worked near the shipyard, he was an engineer, and he didn’t go off to war, he stayed and was building submarines and he had spoken about working with women at the time. He wasn’t in the northeast, but he talked about how just having conversations with women was something very different that he hadn’t experienced in his place of work.
Members of Palmer’s Women’s Football Team Image: IWM (Q 110074)
There was a group of women with a football, and it was the football team and I thought that was really cool. Because obviously now it’s a big change that there’s a full-time football team at St. James’s and just how that’s come on in the 100 years since being one small football team that gets put on T.V. regularly.
I’m currently studying psychology as an A Level. My plan is to go on and do psychology as a degree level and then I want to become an education psychologist working with children with learning disabilities. I’ve done work experience in a nursery before and that was really interesting and very challenging, but it was something that I’d like to learn more about.
I’m dyslexic myself and it was my grandma who noticed and went, “Oh, maybe there’s something else going on here.” So, I really want people to be more aware of not all disorders look the same. I might look very different to the next person that’s dyslexic, and it might have very different symptoms and we could do the same test paper and have very different things but we’re still both dyslexic and it’s trying to have more visibility on things like that.
Hannah was interviewed as part of the Women in Shipbuilding project.