The conference started with a talk from Michelle Rawlins (a faculty member in my department, the School of Information, Journalism and Communication) who has written a book about these women (there is an article introducing the book here).
Rawlins traced the history of steel in Sheffield, which started in the 15th century, leading it to be known as the steel city. In terms of women's involvement, this started with the "Buffer Girls" in the 1860s. Rawlins' focus has been on the women who joined the steel works in the world wars. She saw that there wasn't a book about them, and so she set about writing one. They had to work in apalling conditions, with little regard for health and safety. They were motivated by helping the war effort and their jobs included crane drivers, machine operators, making parts for planes, tanks and munitions.
After the war they didn't really talk about their experience, as there seemed so many other things to work on once the war ended. The project started with Kathleen Roberts, who had very clear memories of war being declared, she worked in the steel works through the war and thought that the women of steel should get more attention. Roberts contacted the local newspaper, the Sheffield Star, in 2009 and they took up the story and started interviewing women of steel, so more women got to tell their story. Eventually a statue was proposed (with no corporate sponsorship allowed, so it wasn't cluttered!) and the statue was commissioned, with input from the women themselves on how it should look.
Following on from that Rawlins was contacted to write a fictional series based on the women's stories and she has done that - you can find information on her website https://michellerawlins.co.uk/
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