‘It Spurs Me On’: Why Female DIY Is Booming

The rise of female DIY

It is hard to miss the explosion of DIY content that has flooded social media over the past decade. From short reels showing how to patch cracks in walls to elaborate YouTube tutorials on building alcove seating from scratch, the internet is packed with seemingly endless home-improvement demonstrations.

DIY was once widely seen as a male domain. Now, female influencers are encouraging a new generation of women to pick up tools and take on projects themselves. At the same time, demand for female trades professionals is rising, and some women are leaving desk jobs for trades they see as less vulnerable to AI disruption.

Jasmine Gurney: proving doubters wrong

DIY influencer Jasmine Gurney has documented an impressive—and exhausting-sounding—list of projects on Instagram.

Over the last year alone, she has torn down partition walls, replaced flooring, erected a fence, insulated and boarded her loft, built an outdoor workshop, made custom cabinetry, moved plug sockets, and built her son his first bed.

Eight months pregnant, the former marketer is now racing to finish a fitted wardrobe before the new baby arrives.

“I like proving people wrong,” says Jasmine, 33, from Bedfordshire. She says she has been trolled by people questioning her techniques, but their doubts only “spur me on more.”

“I’m showing and empowering other women to do it,” she says. “I’ve shown me doing things while pregnant. I’ve had my firstborn strapped to me in a baby carrier while doing things.

“I’m just showing that we are capable, we are interested in this sort of stuff and... we’re sick of waiting around for six months for our husbands to pick up the tools and do it in most cases.”

Jasmine says her page took off during COVID, when people could not get professionals into their homes and needed to learn how to do jobs themselves. The lockdowns are long over, but she believes demand for her content has stuck because there are not enough tradespeople to meet demand, while cost-of-living pressures continue to squeeze household budgets.

Gen Z women lead the charge

Gen Z women are “leading the charge in challenging gendered DIY stereotypes,” according to a 2024 report by B&Q.

Around three-quarters of Gen Z women surveyed said they enjoy DIY, compared with 60% of all female respondents. And 82% of Gen Z women said seeing women take on more complex home DIY projects on social media had inspired them to do more themselves, compared with 60% of women in general.

Of course, not every job is a DIY job. Sometimes you will need to GSI—get someone in.

Bliss Cunneen: from anthropology to plumbing

Bliss Cunneen walked away from an anthropology university course in 2020 to train as a plumber.

The 28-year-old from south London says trying the trade on a whim was “the best thing she’s ever done,” and she loves the freedom and flexibility of running a business.

She has experienced doubt from some customers when she turns up at their door—and was once mistaken for the receptionist. But, she says, “once you start working and you show you’re confident and you know what you’re doing, they’re okay.”

She says the explosion of content online has “definitely helped” broaden attitudes toward women taking up DIY or a trade.

TaskHer: connecting customers with tradeswomen

Anna Moynihan set up TaskHer, a platform connecting female tradespeople with customers who need jobs done, after feeling frustrated when tradesmen she had booked for renovation work would address her husband rather than her.

Five years ago, she says, she could not find any stock photographs of tradeswomen to use for marketing. Even the word “tradeswoman” would get autocorrected to “tradesman.”

“It’s those little things that, you know, ultimately you don’t feel welcome into that environment,” she says. “It’s already hard enough to become a tradeswoman, a woman in an industry where you’re massively underrepresented.”

Inquiries on the site have more than doubled so far this year compared with 2025, while the number of tradeswomen signing up has almost quadrupled, Anna says.

People might prefer a tradeswoman for a range of reasons. Industry surveys suggest they may feel more at ease with a woman entering their home, feel a woman would be more respectful, or want to support women working in traditionally male roles.

Anecdotally, Anna says more women are joining her platform after leaving white-collar jobs. Three Oxford University-educated tradeswomen have signed up in the last month, she adds.

Some had always wanted to take up a trade but felt unable to until now because of their gender, she says. Others want the flexibility of working for themselves in a role less likely to be directly affected by the rapid advance of AI.

Still a small share—but signs of change

Despite the buzz, women make up a tiny proportion of the UK’s construction workforce—around 4%, according to the Federation of Master Builders.

But there are encouraging signs. One in 10 people who started a construction apprenticeship in 2024-25 was a woman, up from around one in 14 five years earlier.

The trend is more than a social-media moment. With construction facing persistent skills shortages and some white-collar roles increasingly exposed to automation, the growing visibility of women in DIY and the trades could help expand the labor pool and challenge outdated assumptions about who belongs on a job site.

DIY influencer Jasmine hopes women who see online content such as hers will be inspired to give a project a go—or consider entering a trade.

“The more women who are seen online doing these sorts of things, the more normal it becomes,” she says.

Anna agrees. “You can’t be what you can’t see, and anything that shows women and girls that they can do something is fantastic.”

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