Women At Sea: Progress and Gaps in the Cruise Industry Leadership
Women represent 2.5% of the maritime industry and 18 to 20% of the cruise industry, making it hard for women to obtain leadership roles and senior positions. But in recent years there has been a shift in the cruise industry, where for the first time more women are taking the helm.
For the past centuries having women on a ship was considered a no-no, women where considered sirens or mermaids who distracted crew members and angered sea gods. But recently women have had the opportunity to break these systems of old beliefs and myths surrounding women at sea. With education, common sense and sexual harassment prevention training, the industry has been promoting women to top ranks.
The first female captain was Karin Stahre-Janson of Sweden, who took command of Royal Caribbean’s Monarch Of The Seas in 2007 and since then other cruise companies have added new women captains, like Cunard with Inger Klein Thorhauge, P&O Cruises with Sarah Breton, Windstar with Belinda Bennett, who is also the cruise industry’s first black female captain, Sea Cloud Cruises with Kathryn Whittaker, AIDA with Nicole Langosch, Silversea with Margrith Ettlin, and The Seven Seas Splendor, a new cruise ship that debuted in 2020, had Serena Melani as its first female Captain.
One day, Kate Mcue was walking on a Caribbean island like a vacationer and a person asked her if she was heading back to the nearest cruise ship, and she replied that she works in the cruise ship. And she asked the person to guess what her role was on board. The person answered by saying she must be the captain’s wife, and she replied by saying that she is in fact the captain. The person’s reaction was that of excitement. Kate Mcue is the first American woman to be the captain of The Celebrity Equinox, since 2015.
Lisa Lutoff Perlo is the first woman president of a cruise line. She has been the CEO of Celebrity Cruises since 2014. Lisa is making initiatives to have more women hired in high-ranking positions. Celebrity is the leading the way when it comes to hiring high ranking female employees, with 22% of its bridge team being women, and that is expected to grow. Lutoff had the chance to meet a cadet in Ghana’s Regional Maritime University, after learning that women who attend the school never get the opportunity to work on cruise ships, only be given opportunities like returning to the university to work as a teacher or as an employee. So, as a consequence, Lutoff created a pipeline for women from Africa to work in the cruise industry. In 2017, Cadet Nicolin Tifuh Azirh became the first West African woman to work on the bridge of a cruise ship. Kate Mcue credits Lisa Lutoff for opening roads to women at sea, with a growth from 4% to 34% across the Celebrity fleet, and also has the first ship with an all-female bridge and officer team.
Ally Cedeno is a chief mate of unlimited tonnage vessels and an offshore dynamic positioning operator, who also founded the Women Offshore Organization, which supports women at sea and offers mentorships like maternity leave and availability of technical uniforms. The maritime industry must prioritize psychological safety and harassment prevention guidelines, which is needed to hire more women like Ally to help retain a strong female workforce.
Virgin Voyages is actively recruiting women to their bridge crew, and has formed The Scarlet Squad to help grow leadership roles for women at sea. Virgin has a shoreside team of 60% female employees, and their goal is to have at least 50% of their shipboard crew to be female.
The cruise industry benefits from the attributes of women working at sea by breaking old myths that surround having women on board, to unique traits of being a woman like empathy, emotional intelligence, problem solving and relating to costumers with a diverse voice.
REFERENCES
Women in Maritime: Progress and persistent challenges in 2024
by The Editorial Team
(Team, December 20, 2024)
Women of the Sea-Suite
29 Jun by Jackie Krentzman
(Krentzman, Jun 29)
MedCruise GA explores women power at sea with leading female voices
By Holly Payne, June 13 2024
(Payne, June 13 2024)
Why There are More Female Cruise Ship Captains Than Ever
By Cynthia Drescher February 21, 2019