Abstract
Jokers suggest that the initials WMU, World Maritime University, stand for ‘Women’s Maritime University’. Such has been the increase in women students over the last decade, because of its successful sponsorship of gender-specific fellowships. So it is fitting that the 2014 International Conference, Maritime Women: Global Leadership, was held there, in Malmö, Sweden. This book arises from the proceedings, which involved 265 delegates and speakers from 74 countries. Most of them are leading figures in maritime life, including from the International Maritime Organisation, which sponsored the event.
The first thing to be said about this book is that it is mighty impressive. So many knowledgeable highly talented people are presenting so much detailed evidence, including offering many tables of invaluable statistics. They speak about what has already been done and what still needs to be done to enable the marginalised half of the population to take a full and active role in maritime leadership, in a climate free from the gender discrimination that places such additional burdens on the lives of people just trying to do their job.
Currently, the maritime world, which is part of the globalised transport industry, is fast-growing but troubled by the downtown, privatisation, deregulation and commercialisation, points out Alison McGarry of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF). New areas of employment, for example in the mainly-female call centres that are part of the supply chain, mean work is casual and unregulated, and done by greater proportions of women than ever before. ‘Precarious’ is a word constantly used of labour now. But, as the conference participants were not historians, there was no discussion that ‘precarious’ has also been the most appropriate adjective for port and on-board working situation for centuries, and that work had been extra-precarious for women scraping a living on Sailotown’s margins. Twentieth-century gains creatively envisioned and won by workers’ solidarity have not endured, as some speakers acknowledged. A difference now is that women (a few) are at the top as well at the bottom. These maritime managers with their MBAs, tablet PCs and commitment to equal opportunities are coming into positions where they can make changes in a push-button world vastly removed from the days when their foremothers swept up the spilt cinnamon and coal dust on sailing ships quays or obeyed orders as the pinafore’d lowest rung of early steamships’ domestic side.
Could it be argued that this volume, as it is forward-looking, has no place in a journal devoted to history book? Partly. However, there are some excellent references to the recent past; 1970s legislation brought women into this overwhelmingly male-dominated workforce as never before. But more importantly, it is becoming a history book, at this moment. And it will become the most seminal global summary yet, after John Belchem et al.’s Women’s Seafarers: Global Employment Policies and Practices.
In all, twenty-one rich chapters cover both regional developments and global ones. Essays with a localised focus include those on Turkish deck and engineering officers; oceanographers in Brazil; female maritime lawyers in Antwerp; women directors on boards of Greek shipping companies (astonishingly few: thirteen out of 305); and female roles in Ecuador’s Maritime Oil Transportation Sector. The most enduringly useful chapter is that by Captain Pengfei Zhang and Dr Minghua Zhao: ‘Chinese Women Seafarers: Past, Present and Prospects’. It summarises women’s early positive start in the revolution, the post-Mao decline and the current difficulties of the graduates from Shanghai, the only maritime college that will accept women. (Historians will note that the gendered pattern is similar to the former USSR and unlike that of countries that had no revolution.)
Transnational thematic chapters include those on 25 Years of the IMO’s Gender Programme, and on the ITF’s Women’s Maritime Leadership Programme. One of the key problems in the industry is retention of trained women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers. Bev Mackenzie explores the ‘Leaky Pipeline’ syndrome: Examining and Addressing the Loss of Women at Consecutive Career Stages in Marine Engineering, Science and Technology. Two Turkish writers dealt with second-generation gender bias, meaning tackling invisible and neutral-seeming cultural practices. Subtle bias builds glass ceilings, they contend. Such discrimination is harder to eliminate than the first-generation intentional and overt discrimination faced by so many of the 1970s breakthrough generation of seawomen.
Like several writers in this book, editor Momoko Kitada was in a position to interview a range of women seafarers in several countries. Her particular focus was ‘Absent Mother Sailors: How Possible Is It to Do the Impossible?’, that is, to continue working at sea after having a child. This dilemma is the most central problem in staffing navies today. Employers are slow in providing family-friendly employment conditions, and the human costs of this failure are high. Sisi, a Ghanaian captain, found that when she returned from a voyage that her three children wouldn’t respond to her orders but checked first with their stay-at-home dad to see if they should. When they cried they turned to him, not her. Several women felt they had become more like sisters than mothers.
Next steps, argue the contributors, must be to establish, implement and monitor gender policies; promote women’s leadership; challenge the stereotypes that women shouldn’t be in STEM careers; give research and education greater prominence; and highlight best practices. Trades unions and maritime education institutions have a crucial role to play here. But this book itself will be a key tool too, if readers can find a way to access it despite its prohibitive price.
Books based on conference proceedings can easily suffer from overlap and repetition. Although most writers here reiterate that basic statistic – only one to two per cent of the world’s 1.25 million seafarers are women) – it is amazing how many interesting variations proliferate on the subject of women’s entry into maritime leadership.
Disappointingly, there is no index in the book. As this book is a compendium, and long, the absence is regrettable. However, as it being so widely read in electronic form (1,827 already, after just a few months), the editors may just have expected readers to rely on the digital search facility. I don’t think it is enough; indices can enable serendipitous intellectual connections. By contrast, it was useful to have an appendix giving the titles of the many conference sessions not included in the book, such as the career progress of Indian captain Anuradha Jha.
Additional slight problems with the book were that several chapters did not appear to have been edited by a native English speaker. Such sections made for difficult reading. And because this book is by management specialists and sociologists, some chapters suffered from a lack of detail that will impede future researchers. For example, key pioneering women and shipping companies were not named. Several chapters used tedious management-speak. While it is useful to see trends and overviews, historians will regret the lack of specificity and case studies in them.
However, Maritime Women: Global Leadership is such a rich resource that these problems are minor. It gives a broad, energetic, varied picture of a reasoned struggle for the turning of an ancient and outdated tide. That old tide failed to recognise the valuable contribution women can make to the maritime industry. With its models for change this book will inspire, as well as inform. It’s currently the most seminal book on maritime women’s work.