Dangerous ground.

It’s not clear if Noah’s wife Naamah, or Emzara (take your pick), gave him and the lads a hand with his big boat build, the Cainites didn’t say, but how many post-diluvial women would have enjoyed that sort of thing?

In a perfect world, half of all woodworkers would be women, for utopianist, anti-Semite and general all round social-schemer Charles Fourier, this would have been more than just conceivable, almost compulsory, but when did socialist utopianism not contain a huge dollop of prescriptive compulsion? A question I ask myself virtually every day. Fourier, as you know, was an enlightened early advocate of feminism (his own word) who had some very particular visions of commune-living. In the Fourierian Phalanx imagined around 1808, any and every woman could expect a freedom of choice and a right to equality that was only beginning to become a reality, and then only patchily, 160 years later. Scattered amongst his more sensible ideas there is a lot of incredible nonsense, but he was a late-night scribbler.

There is a magazine and an internet forum or two and classes all aimed at the female woodworker, which could be thought of as sexist and patronising. I don’t see why there needs to be the gender-specific
differentiation,  woodworking projects very rarely require the use of a penis, and if they do, then just make something else. As to the actual number, it's probably impossible to tell, but at the very least there must surely be more female woodworkers than bearded pole-dancing blokes, and that has to be a positive thing.

To save anyone else the trouble I have been researching this whole subject and I think I have found what may be the earliest reference to a female actively involved in woodworking in England. It comes from the journals of the prolific diarist Sir Thomas Houghton. This, from an entry dated 25 th April 1757.

This afternoon the fair Lady Houghton took to her chamber badly misused by an oaken splinter after she rested momentarily on the hall settle. Being unable to testify to the whereabouts of the splinter through her skirts and petticoats, I declared it suitable work for a physick and took my leave. Was much berated on the state of my furnishings.

I called on the young Mary from within the scullery to plane and smooth the settle which she did gladly showing an undoubted enthusiasm for the task, I concealed myself most well behind the library door so to observe her rising skirts on each and every forward stroke. Such sturdiness of ankle betokens of a mighty Gavotte at some future date.
With the effluvium of the beast rising, I hastened to my bed. Doctor Franklyn was summoned forthwith to bleed me.

The much-criticised Sir Thomas Houghton, man of letters and dance enthusiast.