Jill Wilson, 21, an assistant mechanical engineer with Atkins in Leeds

Wilson began her engineering career at a small company where she was the only woman. Although she loves engineering, she wasn’t happy. “It felt like they didn’t want women working there,” she says. “They didn’t let me go on site – they thought that I would get upset and that I wasn’t strong enough to look after the men on site – so I got stuck in the office.”

When Wilson decided to leave she visited a number of other firms before settling on Atkins. One of the things that impressed her was the number of women she saw working there.

“Here I don’t feel judged by anything other than how I do the job,” she says. “There’s nothing stopping me moving up the ladder and it’s nice working in an office where there’s a mix of men and women. There’s a different atmosphere because men and women have different views on how to approach things and getting us together makes the most of that.”

She also now works on site, where she doesn’t get upset and doesn’t struggle to make herself heard over baritone voices: “It’s actually quite nice being the different person on site. I think they listen a bit more.”

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