The friends who are boosting women's DIY skills

"It could just be something really tiny but the fact that you've done it yourself is such a good starting point," says electrician Sarah Bolger.

She met Justine Wortsman, from Reading, Berkshire, when their children were in primary school and are now developing community workshops to teach DIY skills to other women.

The friends have already introduced several of their Nail It DIY taster sessions that have attracted attendees of various ages and experience levels.

They have been granted funding from Reading Borough Council, which will help provide some free places and subsidise sessions for others.

They got the idea after Bolger was due to help Wortsman with some DIY at her home but decided to show her what to do, so she could use the skills in the future.

The electrician ended up owning a lot of kit from a previous job in sound, where she had been maintaining and repairing it: "I just loved doing all that stuff and tinkering with things and fixing things.

"I had a job briefly repairing lights for a company - it's just always interested me."

She added that her parents were "very practical people".

"My mum block-paved our driveway and then she built a wall - it's stuff like that I think I've benefited from without realising."

Wortsman, who fixed a broken shelving unit for her son's bedroom with her friend's help, said for her it was "more than DIY".

"I've started feeling more comfortable handling a drill or [fixing] a blockage in my sink whereas before, that is something I would have automatically outsourced," she said.

"Now it makes me challenge other assumptions I make about myself and ... I do feel like I'm a bridge generation.

"There was never an expectation that I would know how to change a plug or put up a shelf - it just wasn't something that was expected of me."

A recent study by motoring and cycling specialist Halfords shows "a complete reversal of older generations", with women aged 18–27 being far more confident in their DIY skills, such as painting and decorating, compared to their male peers.

Wortsman said they had not realised "how much of a gap in the market there was".

"Everything we've run to date, we've had waiting lists for," she said.

She has been running a hen party company for more than 15 years, which she said helped her develop and use transferable skills such as hiring venues, updating their online channels and "keeping the customers happy".

"Because Sarah has this wealth of knowledge and she's learning how much people don't know through talking to me, I like to think my ignorance in the DIY arena is helping us, inadvertently," Wortsman said.

So far, the pair have been using four venues in Wokingham, Caversham, Theale and Tilehurst for their taster sessions.

Wortsman said they "like to be a presence in the community", so they hired easily accessible places such as village halls.

Their first workshop is still in the works and Bolger said the participants' feedback had built her confidence to teach - an experience that is "completely new" for her.

They evaluate women's current DIY level upon booking which the electrician said helped her "think about things that are going to keep the more confident people busy while the other people aren't feeling stressed about being left behind".

"We had one lady who doesn't do any DIY, it all falls to her husband, but she went home and she fixed her cooker fuse," she added.

"We have all the kit so you don't need to bring anything, but if you do have things at home that you want to get your head around and you're not sure what to do with it, then people are bringing these to our sessions," Bolger said in an interview with BBC Radio Berkshire.

Wortsman added that the council funding would help them add to the diversity of tools at the workshops.

Wortsman said they have had "a really wide range of ages [of attendees], which I love".

While some go to achieve specific things, others attend for personal reasons, such as two women who had been recently bereaved.

"One of them in particular said 'I miss all the DIY he did and I just miss him'," Wortsman said.

Another of their participants who has early onset arthritis is "very keen" to be able to achieve despite her medical condition.

Wortsman said next on their list was offering the service to young people, so that they "don't have to grow up and then think 'I can't do this stuff'."

She also said their goal was "not just level up the playing field for women but to remove barriers in general".

"I have somebody who struggles with anxiety, there's someone else who had ADHD and had concerns over her ability to retain information in the session, and I will always try to think of a way round."