Managing Director – Bridge Classic Cars
Mechanics and engineering has always traditionally been a male dominated industry but Laura Kennedy from Spanners With Manners has broken the mould.
Laura founded London’s first all-female garage with the vision to make the industry more inclusive
Laura talks in her interview about struggling to be accepted onto apprenticeship schemes due to her gender and discovering unjust pay gaps despite her qualifications. “There’s been a lot of sexism in the workplace,” Laura explains.
When the owner of the car sales and repairs company that she worked for told her that he wanted to retire, she took the move to create her own inclusive all-female garage with the aim to create a space for female mechanics to learn and customers to visit.
Creating an environment for people to learn is an important part of progressing the car engineering industry as many parts of the trade would otherwise die out if skills weren’t passed down. Equally creating a friendly and open space for clients to feel that they are welcome is just as important. Taking this approach to engineering in turn encourages the clients to get more involved with their cars and the industry as it becomes more accessible.
You can see the interview with Freeda here: www.instagram.com/tv/CIq4t39jCjj/?hl=en and visit their Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/Spannerswithmanners/
Caroline’s Cars in Norwich was the first all female garage in the UK and took pride in being a female run and owned company. Although it has sadly shut down this year, it had been running since 2003 and strove to increase diversity and equality in the car engineering industry. In the Engineering UK report of 2018, it stated that 12.37% of engineers are women, with hopes that the figure will rise with more businesses like Spanners With Manners and Caroline’s Cars.
