Anna
Twenty-one-year-old Anna completed a hairdressing apprenticeship and is currently doing her NVQ level 3 qualification in hairdressing. She wants to be a trainer in a salon or college.
At school Anna worked on a Saturday at a local hairdressers; but decided against hairdressing as a career. She started a travel course at college but the course was cancelled after a few months.
At 17 she decided to go into hairdressing and got an apprenticeship at a salon. She has since worked in different salons and has found they vary in pay and level of training offered. Anna also has personal experience of the difference in apprenticeship pay for men and women.
‘My boyfriend’s a plumber and he was on much more money than me when I was an apprentice. He’s still on double what I was on. He was on £150 a week when he first started and now he’s just finished which is the same level as me, and he brings home about £300 a week. So that’s a lot more money and we’ve got the same level qualifications.’
Anna says that you have to really want to be in hairdressing because the pay wouldn’t make anyone do it.
‘I could go and work in Top Shop or somewhere 9 to 5 and I’d get paid more money. I think that’s why a lot of girls leave hairdressing. It’s because of the pay and the hours.’
Anna does enjoy her job and says that as long as you have long-term ambitions and can afford to continue training to progress, hairdressing can be a good career for a woman.
‘Hairdressing is always something that you can come back to after you’ve had children. And you know, it’s not just hairdressing in a salon, you know you can go and teach at college, you can go work on a cruise ship, you can do TV and film work, there’s everything that you can do within hairdressing.’