American women who came to the UK in 2022 on a ‘learning exchange’ pictured on the steps of the Town Hall with Islington councillors

WORKING for a construction company when she left school in the mid-1990s, Joanne Flaherty had to ask her male project manager for a key when she wanted to use the bathroom – if there was a women’s bathroom at all.

As one of the only women on a building site, personal protective equipment made for men fit Ms Flaherty “like a tent” and hard-capped boots small enough for her size 5 feet were few and far between.

Now she is directing the redevelopment of the Holloway Prison site on Parkhurst Road – renamed Holloway Park – into flats and a public park.

And while construction has become more gender-diverse since Ms Flaherty started out, a new scheme to train and employ as many women as possible on the Holloway Park construction site will nonetheless set it apart from the usually male-dominated demographic of the industry.

Ms Flaherty said: “I’m absolutely delighted to lead the delivery of a site that is really honouring the history of what was once here.”

Islington Council, together with developer Peabody and delivery partner London Square, have said at least 30 per cent of around 50 apprentices to be trained during the construction of Holloway Park will be women, working in everything from general labour to carpentry, electrical and site supervision.

“I think that statistically it’s an incredible target if you look at how many men are in industry and how many women are coming through,” Ms Flaherty added.

She said the aim would be to employ more women, but would “have to be realistic about who can fulfil those roles”.

Since Holloway Prison closed in 2016, community groups have been campaigning to make sure the redevelopment of what was once the largest women’s prison in Europe includes social housing, women’s services and green space.

Chair of grassroots group Community Plan for Holloway, Roderik Gonggrijp, explained: “The prison had a large footprint in the area, not just because of its size but because there were a lot of people in and out of that building.

“Services were being delivered through different organisations inside the prison or associated with the prison, for the women who had been in contact with the justice system.

Tradeswomen from the US at the site in 2022

“All of that basically disappeared overnight when they closed the prison.

“So from the start we wanted [the redevelopment of the site] to be somewhere that women could have a home.”

Although the group’s ambition for a standalone women’s building – providing various community services – on the site was reduced to a single floor beneath two residential towers, the women’s apprenticeships scheme satisfies another theme of their campaign to honour the legacy of the prison.

The scheme emerged from a 2022 delegation of around 40 American tradeswomen who came to the UK for a “learning exchange” about how to increase women in the trades, organised by labour history professor Linda Clarke at the University of Westminster, who is also involved with CP4H and lives near the former prison site.

Professor Clarke said: “The idea was to make it 100 per cent women as a symbolic nod to the history of the prison – we wanted to really train a great mass of women.”

However, like Ms Flaherty, she acknowledged that there are not always enough women wanting to go into construction, or even aware of it as a viable career path.

One of the women on the learning exchange was electrician Noreen Buckley, from North America-based organisation Trades­women Building Bridges, who advocates for more women to work in the trades.

Ms Buckley said: “Ultimately, what you’re providing them with is a straight line path to freedom. The fact that they’re going to get dirty doesn’t matter, the fact that they have to lift things doesn’t matter.

“I go in and I have to wire a room, and all of a sudden the lights turn on. It gives me such a sense of pride. As you learn a construction skill, that’s knowledge that nobody can touch. So then what comes with that is hope and freedom and a sense of security.

“What these schemes are doing is challenging men’s power, right?

“Through this scheme, this land is giving to women in a different way.”

Ms Flaherty was similarly enthusiastic about her work as a construction site supervisor. “I absolutely fell in love with it,” she said. “The most rewarding thing is when you go from having a piece of dirt, a blank piece of paper, and when you go back there however many years later, you’ve created a community.”

She said that the focus on hiring women at Holloway Park was part of what drew her to the job.

Mr Gonggrijp added: “The scheme is a really, really positive thing and I think the council should make more of showcasing what they’re doing.”