Honey Halit with Ricky Jefferson at Wood That Works

A FEMALE woodworker has emphasised the key role men still have to play in supporting women’s access to male-dominated spaces.

Honey Halit, together with graphic designer Camilla Maxwell-Comfort and woodworker Ricky Jefferson, set up “Wood That Works” in 2020.

The organisation runs a carpentry workshop on the Whittington Estate in Highgate overlooking the cemetery. Run as a “community interest company”, women unable to afford the price of the workshop can train for free.

Those who can afford it pay £30 a session. Wood That Works runs women-only workshops three days a week that attempt to break “traditional societal stereotypes” around carpentry.

Speaking to the New Journal, neuroscientist-turned-carpenter Ms Halit celebrated her fellow founder Mr Jefferson as “biggest feminist here”.

“Still the reality in my head is there’s an imbalance in the world, we don’t have equality. Women can strive and fight for empowerment, they can empower themselves and be empowered,” Ms Halit said. “But it’s not a takeover. Actually we need men who will empower women and invite women and share their experiences.”

Mr Jefferson, who worked for 15 years teaching woodwork at the Highgate Newtown Community Centre before helping form Wood That Works, is “fantastic at being a support” to women working with wood, Ms Halit said.

“Ricky works with every single woman in here and not one of us feels stupid, inadequate, like we’re never going to get this. Seventy per cent of the women that come here have had either a grandfather or a father who demonstrated to them a positive experience, usually a nurturing experience.

“They’ll say: ‘my grandfather used to,’ or ‘my father used to’… even if it was just to stand there and hold the wood, it was an inclusive experience that the women had, something they look back on with nostalgia and fondness. It only has to be a small experience but that allows them to take that step towards woodwork,” Ms Halit said.

“There is a connection between the small experiences that girls have that free them to take the steps towards something that still is traditionally a blokes’ world.”

In the women-only workshops, Ms Halit notices some women “have a tendency to say things like: ‘Can you help me? I’m doing something wrong’ – there’s that sense of blaming oneself, as opposed to blaming the tools.”

Meanwhile other women find it difficult to ask for help, because they are used to doing things “by themselves,” Ms Halit said. “There are moments where it’s appropriate for them to ask for help, and they don’t. And there are others where the opposite is true.”

She said all three instructors work by “reading the room”, adding: “you don’t let someone struggle to the point where they feel bad about themselves, but you also don’t jump in and give help too soon, so it’s that balance.”

Many women notice a big change in themselves after joining the workshops. “As women work and transform the raw material they are working on, they themselves transform.

They build their confidence and connect to creative parts of themselves that have either been dormant or not being allowed to flourish,” Ms Halit said. Wood That Works is now fundraising to finance the next round of free places in the workshop by auctioning a rare aluminium “spade chair” by design studio Toogood.

For more info, follow @woodthatworkslondon on Instagram.