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Woman of the Day Karen Harrison born OTD 1960 in Glasgow, the UK’s first woman trainer driver and the first woman to preside over an ASLEF conference. From the age of 17, she endured ten years of sustained verbal and physical harassment from management and staff but she refused to give up. In 1977, 17 year old Karen applied to British Rail to become a Secondman, the first step in her ambition to become a train driver. In those days, a Secondman assisted the driver of the train by carrying out essential duties such as operating the heating systems, shunting the train when required and generally assisting the driver. That way, they could learn by observation with a view to passing the drivers’ tests and exam. A sort of apprenticeship. She proceeded to the interview stage but only because she’d applied as K. Harrison and British Rail thought she was a lad. They tried to shunt her into the typing pool but she stood her ground. No, she said, train driver. The law was on Karen’s side. After all, this was 1977. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 removed the barriers to women’s employment if they were otherwise suitable for the job. However, the law today is also on the side of women (and men) who hold gender critical beliefs. It doesn’t stop them from being harassed, investigated for spurious reasons (“malicious communications”, anybody?) and even hounded out of their jobs, does it? Karen started work at Old Oak Common, a traction maintenance depot west of Paddington, formerly used for storing and servicing locomotives. It started immediately. "Ten years of hell, ten years of heaven. It's a bit tough when you're only a teenager and you're hit by this gigantic tidal wave of hate. To a lot of the men, I was the proverbial turd in the swimming pool. Every day I walked into the mess room I'd be s***ting myself, but strutting about pretending not to be. I couldn't let them create no-go areas for me; that would've established a precedent and we couldn't have that, could we? It would've been the beginning of the end." There was next-to-no support from colleagues or management. Almost to a man, they didn’t want her there and they used every opportunity to let her know. “It was open warfare. People wouldn’t work with me, people put notes up about me, my locker was defaced. Graphic pornography went up in the mess rooms.” By people, Karen meant men. All of her harassers were men, including some who probably prided themselves on being family men with wives and daughters. It must have felt at times as though she was at the mercy of a pack of wolves. When I say “almost to a man” however, there was an honourable exception: the old-style Communists at the depot. “It was like being raised by wolves. They did a grand job, bless them." Ultimately though, don’t mess with a Glaswegian. Karen overcame every single manmade obstacle thrown in her path and qualified as a train driver in 1979. She credited her resilience to her Scottish genes, “rich in stubbornness”. After her ten years of hell, Karen transferred to Marylebone and it must have been like emerging from the dark, dark forest into the light. A member of ASLEF, she earned a good reputation with her fellow trade unionists, campaigned for improved conditions for women in the rail industry, and in 1995 was elected as lay member to preside over an ASLEF conference. A bout of meningitis put paid to Karen’s career as a train driver but she secured employment as a full-time officer for UNISON, representing members at employment tribunals. She never lost a case. That prompted her to study law at Oxford as a mature student. “It was hard, f****** hard, but it's easier than driving a trains for a living. It's hard to get too stressed about exams when you've experienced things like brake failure approaching a red signal, especially when you can see another train crossing the junction in front of you. I still miss the camaraderie of my mates in ASLEF. I miss them terribly. The folk at my college are the closest I've got to that old espirit de corps and they put up with an old bag like me with great stoicism." Karen was due to graduate in May 2011 - her plan was to work as a barrister specialising in labour law and human rights - but she died just a matter of weeks before at the age of 50. Today, just 8.5% of train drivers are women but there is a touching tribute to Karen at Euston Station: a giant mural encouraging more women to apply. “I never wanted to be pushed out. I knew if I’d left the railway, I’d have let these people win and what was happening was wrong and it wasn’t fair.”