Electrical Engineering => Women's Engineering Society

Caroline Haskett was an English electrical engineer, electricity industry administrator and champion of women’s rights

Born in August 1895 in West Sussex in the UK, and after attending school in Haywards Heath, she undertook a business secretarial course in London, where she also joined the Suffragette movement.

Transferring to the Cochran workshops during World War I she acquired basic engineering training in London and in Dumfriesshire.

In June 1920 she helped to found Atalanta Ltd, an engineering firm for women.

We are coming to an age when the spiritual and higher state of life will have freer development, and this is only possible when women are liberated from soul-destroying drudgery … I want [every woman] to have leisure to acquaint herself more profoundly with the topics of the day

And during the next 20 years her public activities were extraordinary.

A key motive in her work was electrifying the home to liberate women from domestic drudgery.

After WWII the UK decided it needed to rebuild the electricity grid. Haslett was the only woman on the committee the government tasked with the design. Her advocacy transformed electrical safety from a specialist concern into a domestic standard, resulting in what is widely considered the world’s safest plug system with the now familiar 3 prone plug.

She was the first woman to chair the British Electrical Development Association (1953–1954)

Haslett published many books and writings, including: Teach Yourself Household Electricity (in collaboration with E. E. Edwards, 1939); Munitions Girl, A Handbook for the Women of the Industrial Army (1942); Problems Have No Sex (1949).

She edited The EAW Electrical Handbook for the Electrical Association for Women, first published in 1934, which went into seven editions by 1961. She was also the author of numerous journal articles and conference papers.

In recognition of Haslett’s services to women she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1931, and in 1947, in recognition of her work for the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour, she was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She was elected a Companion of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) in 1932.

She died at the age of 61 in 1957. In her will she requested that her body be cremated by electricity.