Barrow-in-Furness,UK: Seventeen-year-old Micha Knight is quite literally bearing the torch for women in engineering – she is the first female apprentice welder in the Barrow shipyard since the 1980s.

Not only that, but she has the makings of a future champion; her work has so impressed her BAE Systems Maritime – Submarines instructors that they plan to train her up to enter welding competitions later in the year. Welding Instructor Malky McCann said: “For a 17-year-old she is brilliant – the standard of Micha’s work is excellent. She is a real trail blazer!”

Micha Knight blazing the trail for women in welding at BAE Systems Maritime – Submarines welding school (Picture by Mike Vallance).

So what prompted an ambitious female school leaver, a year or so ago, to pick up the welding torch? Micha said: “I actually applied to come into the yard as an electrician, but didn’t get it. I got onto an engineering course at the localFurnessCollegeto gain more knowledge about what I was going to do, but when I got there I decided I didn’t enjoy electrical work.”  The students spent four weeks on each of mechanical, pipe fitting, welding and electrical – and Micha found she had a natural welding ability. I found I performed stronger in welding, that was what I was best at, and I enjoyed it. I chose welding to get my NVQ (National Vocational Qualification).”

At the end of her course, Micha reapplied with Submarines as a welder, bringing with her a sample of her work, both practical and written, and was promptly taken on last September. She began to train as a structural welder – and her test pieces have impressed all who have seen them. Malky said: “She has done every type of structural welding – down hand, vertical, horizontal and overhead – all 100 per cent X-rayed and UT’d (ultra sonically tested) and without a doubt she is good enough for welding competition.”

Micha gets on well with her peers, but she does find her mates are a bit bemused. “I like going out, and that means that I get quite dressed up, with the eyelashes and extensions, and they find it a bit weird that I come in here and dress down into boots and overalls!” She certainly hopes others will follow in her footsteps. “Welding is stereotypically a man’s job, but if people realise girls can do it as well, or even better, why wouldn’t they want to take it up?”