New Year honour for Hattie
Hattie Hasan, founder of Stopcocks Women Plumbers, has been awarded an MBE in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. She becomes a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her work in supporting and promoting women in the heating and plumbing industry.
Hattie left teaching and joined the plumbing industry in 1990, but she was unable to find an employer – so she employed herself and went to college until she qualified.
She knew that the few women in the industry were encountering similar obstacles and levels of isolation that she was, and in 2007 she created a website. From then on, women began to contact her, asking for support and information on how to join the industry, become qualified, gain experience and find work. She still receives emails and calls every week from women asking for her help.
In 2017, she relaunched Stopcocks as a national franchise for women in the heating and plumbing industry, then created the annual Women Installers Together Conference, where female heating engineers, plumbers and manufacturing industry supporters meet and spend a celebratory day together.
