IWD- Women Shaping the Cruise Industry
Gender diversity is as critical to a ship as it is to any enterprise, this encourages teamwork and creativity while bringing a range of perspectives. 2% of 1.25 million seafarers are women, this means there’s plenty of room for growth.
Ally Cedeno is a 2008 graduate from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. As Ally culminated and entered life at sea, she saw there wasn't many women to turn to in certain situations she found herself in. She needed a mentor, someone who could understand the challenges female seafarers faced, this motivated her to develop and organization that would help women face some of the problems she faced. She decided to create a website where women seafarers can interact, help, and mentor each other.
Womensoffshore.org is an organization founded to support female seafarers. It’s a non-profit, private operating organization that was established in 2017. This website provides women with professional development resources, and it raises awareness about the issues women face as seafarers.
Here are multiple examples of women that are helping shape the cruise industry:
• Belinda Bennett - As the first female captain of Windstar Cruises and the first black female captain in the commercial cruise business, Captain Belinda Bennett is paving the way for greater diversity.
• Kelly Craighead- CEO of CLIA, is the third woman to head the cruise industry in the last ten years. She has a passion for empowering women leaders and frequently shares her knowledge and counsel with women working in the travel and tourism industry.
• Christine Duffy- the first female president of Carnival Cruise Line, oversees the largest cruise line in the business, with a fleet of 26 ships, which carry 5.2 million passengers yearly and employ more than 40,000 people from 110 different countries.
• Vicky Freed- a well-known advocate for Travel Agent Partners, a group of mainly female travel agents, and she is noticed for managing the largest sales staff in the cruise industry at Royal Caribbean Cruises. During her career, she rose to the position of the first female chairman of the North American cruise industry's marketing and travel agent training division of the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA).
• Serena Melani, a captain with 30 years of experience, was one of the first women to work in the maritime business early in her career. She joined Regent Seven Seas Cruises, where she was made the first female Master Captain of the company.
• With a multicultural, international staff on land and at sea, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, president and CEO of Celebrity Cruises, became the first woman to oversee one of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.'s brands in 2014. She is an advocate for diversity in the cruise industry and has created a number of initiatives to attract more women to senior positions on board ships.
• Princess Cruises' president, Jan Swartz, is in charge of the third-largest cruise line in the world, a global cruise and tour corporation that carries 1.8 million passengers a year on a fleet of 18 current ships. Jan understands that diverse teams produce greater results. This is why she's attempting to change this by encouraging more women to work in the cruise business.
I close this article with a quote I found that I hope inspires and influences you all. “More power to all the women seafarers who are fighting all the odds, breaking stereotypes, and rocking the oceans on a daily basis. We need more of you.” - @womensailors
References:
https://www.travelweekly.com/Cruise-Travel/Women-led-cruise-shows-how-far-female-seafarers-have-come
http://atlanticpacific.co/the-rise-of-female-cruise-ship-captains/