Auctioneer Isabel Murtough wept as the lot finally sold for £16,000. Her voice began to shake with emotion and tears started to flow as the bids kept coming. Ms Murtough told the bidders: 'I'm sorry - this means so much to me. I told myself I wasn't going to do this. Just think about what these women went through at that time. It just really resonates at this moment."
Snow admitted to telling his daughter that women pilots flew Spitfires in action. Knowing that women were allowed to fly them as delivery pilots, Snow showed the girl online pictures of women in the cockpit – telling her they were in battle. He explained: ‘I have thought about it in terms of gender and exposing my daughters to the realities of pre-20th century gender relations which are pretty grim and I guess you’ve got to, but I’m bringing her up in a way that she’s hopefully seeing her gender as something that is not an obstacle to doing anything.’
Britain has the lowest proportion of female engineers in Europe, at just eight per cent. But there’s one project that’s been groundbreaking… both literally and figuratively. Almost a third of the engineers on the £15 billion Crossrail project, the East-West London rail line due to open next year, are women, thanks to a concerted effort to increase the diversity of the workforce.