Jessica Amdemariam, a building services engineer from Dartford, said she was inspired to pick the profession by women in films, according to BBC. The 21-year-old said: "In Fast & Furious and all of that I used to find it so cool when I would see female mechanics. I grew up thinking ‘That’s who I want to be, I want to be as cool as her’." Miss Amdemariam was a semi-finalist for Screwfix's Trade Apprentice 2024 award. She said: "If you were to tell me when I was in secondary school that I’m doing the job that I’m doing now I would have said that is not possible’.” Astrid Arnold, who won the Screwfix Top Tradesperson award in 2023, trained at a now-closed all-female building college, which she would like to see more of. She said: "If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. I think a lot of women don’t think it is for them." Arnold said schools should be inspiring girls into construction work and advisers should be educated about the industry. She added: "Career advisers don’t advise 16-year-old girls to go and work on a building site, they just don’t." Amdemariam feels that more all-female colleges would help "build a community". She said: "I think it would make women feel more comfortable to come into the industry because it can be quite intimidating being the only girl."
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