All change from the British Rail I worked for

摘要

I am sorry that Sheila Holden (NCE 4 November) was treated so shabbily at a British Rail interview. I suspect that she fell foul of the prejudices of her particular manager because there was no sign of such problems when I joined British Rail at Peterborough in 1964. Upon appointment as a junior technician, I was placed under the supervision of the redoubtable Betty Saunders, an engineer who encouraged and supported me in my first job in the industry. Later, in 1968, when I transferred to Leicester, I worked with two women out of a total staff of five. My two female colleagues were allocated duties without reference to their gender and it never occurred to us that gender should be an issue.