Women in seafaring are still rare today. There are several reasons for this. A seafarer reports on the hurdles there are – and why she decided to work anyway.
When Swetlana Timm-Vengerov went to sea for the first time, she was 17 years old. The plane takes you from Germany to South Korea. And there in the port city of Busan on board for the first time. “It was, of course, a very impressive feeling and experience at first because you couldn’t really estimate what to expect,” remembers the now 30-year-old.
They went across the Pacific to North and Central America and then back to Asia. Timm-Vengerov was on the road for six weeks, the entire summer holidays. As a student, she took part in the holiday driver program of the Association of German Shipowners (VDR). An idea from her godfather, who was the only one in the family who had any contact with seafaring.
13 years later, Timm-Vengerov no longer just looks over the shoulders of the on-board crew. Since 2021 she has been the second technical officer at the Hamburg container shipping company Hapag Lloyd. It monitors the technical processes and eliminates errors; it coordinates maintenance and repair work as well as the mechanical engineering staff. “I’m a manager,” she says – and is therefore part of a minority.
Women in seafaring – alone among men?
In the higher ranks of seafaring, the proportion of female seafarers is even lower than in seafaring as a whole. At the end of September this year, 3.8 percent of the 3,300 captains, officers and similar employees in Germany were women. This is shown by figures from Knappschaft-Bahn-See.
Of all the 7,900 employees in merchant shipping and deep-sea fishing who are subject to pension insurance on board, female seafarers made up 6.7 percent. This means that the proportion of women is significantly higher than the international figure of around two percent, emphasizes Gaby Bornheim, the first woman to head the VDR. Nevertheless, the association is striving to increase this proportion significantly: “Given the shortage of skilled workers, we simply cannot afford to do without half of humanity.”
Technical officer Timm-Vengerov is also usually the only woman when she is at sea with around two dozen crew members. “I had that once, there were three of us. It was already called a women’s steamer,” says the 30-year-old, who studied ship operations technology in Warnemünde. “You don’t know it any other way and I can handle it well.” But why is shipping still such a male-dominated industry? What kind of hurdles are there for women there? And what has already changed?
Less physical work thanks to modern technology
“It’s not an easy job and people used to say: women don’t have the physical strength for it,” says Franziska Eckhoff, Germany chairwoman of Wista, an international network of women in the shipping industry (Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association). But that has changed: “Whereas men used to carry every piece of cargo in a sack on their shoulders, today we have cranes, containers, etc.” The ships are technically more innovative and the physical work has become less. “That makes equality, that theoretically a woman can also do this job, easier.”
An assessment with which Eckhoff is not alone. “Hard work, rough tone” – there are often prejudices when it comes to the working environment, says VDR President Bornheim. “Thanks to modern technology, the work is no longer as physically demanding as it used to be, and working together on board is characterized by a strong team spirit.”
“Compatibility of family and career is still an issue”
However, technology cannot solve the fact that seafarers are often away for several months. This is also the case with Timm-Vengerov. For the past five years she has spent Christmas at sea – with a communal meal and a Christmas tree on board.
“Balancing family and work is still an issue,” says Eckhoff. But there are also areas in seafaring that can be easily combined with family because they are like day trips or a week-long trip – such as ferries that go back in the morning and evening. “I’m also a fan of more women becoming tugboat captains.”
She also once received feedback from a captain in liner shipping: “This is the best work-life balance I’ve ever had. I’m at work for four months and that’s my job. Then I come home and I’m 100 percent at home.” She has also heard of the occasional model that allows you to take your partner or child on board, says Eckhoff.
Harassment on board – an industry problem?
And what about harassment of women in seafaring? According to the network, more than 1,000 female seafarers from 78 countries took part in a survey carried out by Wista International, among others. Two thirds of those surveyed agreed that their male colleagues harassed and intimidated female colleagues; a quarter said that physical and sexual harassment occurred on board.
According to Bornheim, discrimination and harassment against women “is not a shipping-specific phenomenon, but a social phenomenon.” Nevertheless, the VDR President sees a particular challenge in maritime shipping: the workplace is also the place of residence for some time, and there is a “certain amount of space” on board. In recent years, the issue of bullying and harassment – including sexual harassment – has fortunately increasingly moved onto the agenda of international bodies. There will be a first meeting of the World Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) in February 2024 “to jointly develop strategies on how to deal with this problem.”
(In)visibility of seafaring and women
Last year, the IMO declared International Women in Maritime Day for the first time on May 18th. “It is clearly a positive development that the IMO has placed the promotion of women in the maritime industry relatively high on its agenda,” says Eckhoff. This means no one can ignore it anymore.
The managing director of the maritime vocational training center, Sabine Zeller, welcomes the fact that women in maritime shipping began to show themselves more on this day. “We need these lighthouses,” she says. There is a lack of “visibility of maritime shipping as a professional field in general and of women in these professions in particular”. Unfortunately, women on board are still largely perceived as unusual – they want to work to “make it normal at some point.”
For technical officer Timm-Vengerov, working on board large container ships has long been everyday life. “I would encourage any woman who is interested to give it a try,” she says of working at sea. “You can go on land any time,” she adds and laughs.