“If you want something done properly, do it yourself,” says the old adage, and it’s applying more than ever to women and home maintenance tasks. DIY – traditionally the domain of the man of the house – is losing its masculine image and an increasing number of women are ‘tooling up’ to take on the blocked drain, the dripping tap and those shelves that should have been put up months ago.

One reason behind this evolution is the increasing number of women living alone, including those owning their own homes. For these women, there may not be a man about the house to do the DIY, and calling in a professional has its drawbacks. “Good tradesmen are hard to find and often they are expensive, £200 per day being the normal labour costs,” says Tracey Bennett, Instructor and Training Co-ordinator at Trade Skills 4U, a training company in Crawley whose curriculum includes a home DIY course for women.

There’s also the inconvenience of waiting around for professionals to turn up – especially if they know it’s a small job – not to mention the mess: as Tracey points out, tradesmen are not always the most tidy around your home. Then there’s the satisfaction in executing the task to your specifications and timetable: “Doing it yourself allows you greater control on how the job is done,” she adds.

Even when there is a man in the house, he may be no more clued up on home maintenance than his female partner. Caroline Barnett-Philips is the UK Managing Director of Tomboy Tools, a company specialising in hands-on education in DIY tools for women via Tupperware-style tool parties. She says, “There’s an assumption that guys can do it, but men are not born with the skills.”

She began learning her own handy skills while helping her father around the family home, but not every child – boy or girl – gets to have this experience. And these days in many single-parent families, the time children spend with their fathers is ‘fun’ or quality time, rather than watching and learning as he does the DIY. The gap in male DIY know-how is prompting a change of attitude in women, says Caroline. “Women are thinking, ‘if he can’t do it, there’s no reason why I can’t do it.’”

Feel the fear...

The first barrier to ‘doing it yourself’ that many women have to overcome is lack of confidence. Tracey Bennett constantly meets women who come to Trade Skills 4U’s courses “as frightened as mice” of tools – power tools in particular, including ones they already have at home. “They’re all embarrassed to confess their fear,” she says, “but they all tell the same story.”

It’s no surprise they feel this way if they’ve been actively discouraged all their lives to do hands-on DIY tasks. Janet Shelley, Managing Director of Women Builders Ltd, a building and training company in Milton Keynes, was literally not allowed to enrol in the woodwork classes she wanted to do in secondary school – the classes were strictly for male students. This despite the fact that, like Caroline Barnett-Philips, Janet was always helping her father with maintenance work at home and was a far more effective assistant than her brothers.

Janet, now 40, believes that women of her generation or older would have had similar experiences. Caroline concurs: a lot of women attending tool parties, especially those in their 50s or 60s, have never had to use tools before.

At home with your tools

So how to overcome this fear of the unknown? An obvious starting point may be the local DIY store, but Caroline Barnett-Philips advises against this. “You can be overwhelmed by the selection,” she says. “There are so many kinds of hammers and screwdrivers that suddenly you don’t know what you want. It can put you off before you even start.”

Caroline’s first suggestion is to experience some DIY tools in a relaxed environment, preferably under the guidance of a friend. She stresses the necessity of trying them out and getting to grips with them as objects: “It’s important to get a feel of the tools and have a go.” Hands-on education and ‘having a go’ are the primary concepts behind Tomboy Tools’ tool parties, where a company representative comes along to discuss and demonstrate DIY tools and tasks to you and your party guests in the comfort of your own home.

As a result of trying the tools, women are realising that DIY is not as hard as they thought. “Especially drills,” says Caroline. “Women are really surprised to find that you do have control of a drill.” It’s revelations like this that, she says, give women “the flash of inspiration to go off and do things”.

Something you may be inspired to do is further your DIY education by taking a course. Women-friendly and women-only courses are now being run across the UK. Trade Skills 4U started their ladies’ home maintenance courses simply because of demand: there are plenty of women wanting to tackle DIY who lack experience, knowledge and confidence around their own homes.

Tiling, plastering, plumbing, home maintenance, bricklaying and electrics can all be found on the curriculum. Men have started coming to the courses (courses are also run for both women and men) because their female partners’ newly-acquired DIY skills have eclipsed their own.

Tool advice

When you’re ready to get to work, make sure you choose tools that are fit for purpose and comfortable to use. Some tools may look good but they start to hurt after a while. Look for practical safety features, for example, a rubber grip on hammer – a hammer flying out of your hands when first attempting DIY could put you off for good.

A simple piece of DIY advice is to wear gloves wherever possible (men should do this too, even though they have harder skin on their hands than women). It’s just as important as wearing gloves in the garden, to protect from splinters and blisters, though DIY gloves will need to allow more dexterity than gardening gloves.