New women’s maritime award shortlist revealed.

International Maritime Rescue Federation awards for Search and Rescue will include a special new award for women this year. Shortlisted women were announced yesterday. 
What follows is mainly an extract from part of the press release, but with added pictures and personal details.
The SAR award honours both professionals and volunteers. Often volunteering is a way in for women.
Winners' outstanding commitment' is honored. But the awards also make the wider world aware of SAR.

The Women in SAR Award is part of the  International Maritime Rescue Federation's wider #WomenInSAR initiative. 
This is in support of the International Maritime Organisation's Empowering Women in Maritime campaign.  
“The Award will recognize someone who is an inspirational role model for others.
Shortlisted finalists for this inaugural Award are Captain Song Yin of the Donghai No.1 Rescue Flying Service in China and Isobel Tugwell, a crew member at the RNLI Shoreham Lifeboat Station in the UK. 

 Song Yin

Song Yin joined the Rescue Flying Service after graduating from Shanghai Maritime University in 2008. She has gained extensive flying and technical experience to become one of China's first female search and rescue helicopter captains.
A People’s Daily online article about this ‘most beautiful female rescue pilot’ and her feats can be seen at http://en.people.cn/90001/90783/91300/7404983.html. See their pic.





See a video about her at work: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=629110454227562

Isobel Tugwell

Isobel Tugwell joined the Shoreham lifeboat crew at 17 and has been taking a full part in SAR operations ever since – even while she was studying for her A-levels.
There are two other women in her RNLI team too. See http://www.shorehamlifeboat.co.uk/the-crew/
Isobel is also a community police officer in Brighton and Hove. Her dad is part of the RNLI team and so was  her granddad.

Why this award matters

On announcing the shortlist Theresa Crossley,  the chief executive of the IMRF said: "The calibre of all the nominations continues to inspire and amaze the judges. All around the world there are breath-taking search and rescue operations being conducted in harrowing conditions with SAR professionals using their skill and expertise to save lives in remarkable circumstances.  Here are just some of those people, selected today as our finalists."

The winners of all the Awards will be announced at a presentation ceremony on 10 September, on board HQS Wellington, during London International Shipping Week. The Awards will be presented by Vice-Admiral Sir Tim Laurence. He is Anne, Princess Royal’s second husband.

My comment

Setting up this award is an important step in the struggle to encourage women into STEM jobs, and in recognising the achievements of those already in it.
‘If you can’t see it, you can’t be it’ goes the slogan, highlighting the value of role models in helping young women see wider opportunities. This award helps us do that seeing.

More than Grace Darlings: Women in lifeboats

Now we can know the full story of women in lifeboats. Britain's first book on lifeboat women is just out - Sue Hennessy's Hidden Depths, Women of the RNLI (The History Press, £16.99).
I was so excited and impressed to read about the work of women crew on today's high tech lifeboats. They're such pioneers - just like their tough forbears who acted like human tractors, launching the lifeboats.

MOVING TALES
But I hadn't expected to be so moved by stories of women who do the much less derring-do task of raising funds. Particularly moving are the accounts of those who bequeath their life savings to the RNLI and have lifeboats named after them. Those pages gave me two cries a minute.
This book is a mix of both the modern and historical, based on interviews with many women. So it's a subjective personalised history of an organisation/group of communities seen from many angles.

CONTESTED SPACES
My favourite bit is where Sue Hennessy, the just-retired Principal of the Lifeboat College, talked - oh so delicately - about the thorny problem of going to the loo.
In looking at women's history many have found that lavatory usage(ladies vs gents) is symbolic of gender tensions. The issue is about how difference is respected and what kinds of space women are allocated.Indeed, a group of US feminist academics are putting together a book called Toilet Papers: The Gendered Construction of Public Toilets.
When it comes to the sea specifically, cross-dressed women seafarers in history used horns or urinating instruments as a kind of funnel. In maritime life so many arguments about 'we can't allow women on ships' utilise the lack of space for separate bathrooms as the justification for women's total exclusion.
So how do women today manage it on the small RNLI boats on choppy waters when they have to struggle their way through so many layers of protective clothing to access a shared bucket in cramped cabin? Forthrightly and with humour.
Dwyn Perry of Moelfre, who is the helm on the inshore lifeboat and the navigator on the all-weather lifeboat describes her procedure: "I now kindly say, 'Right you lot, I'm off to the loo' and hang off the back end. I know it's not very ladylike but it works." Nicki Wood of Sheerness has her own bucket. Karolyn Rath of Clogher Head "is always first off the boat after a shout [call out] but has to tolerate the men ever asking her 'have you not gone yet?'".

MATES - AND SEXISM
What comes across clearly is the acceptance, the kindliness and cheer of being part of a dedicated team. These women and men are mates, whatever the difficulties some people still have about women in the job. Such misogyny is largely absent from this upbeat book but there's one telling tale:
Eleanor Hooker of Loch Derg is part of all-women crew of six. In 2004 they went to rescue a cruiser that had gone aground. The small boy aboard called 'Daddy, they are all women!' Eleanor joked 'Will you wait while we go back and find some men?'
But clearly RNLI women are doing the job just fine!

Lifeboat women

Struggling to write my book on women on the wartime seas, this week I've been investigating lifeboat women.

It's been fascinating to find out that war didn't change the tradition that women helped launch the boats (before sea tractors did the hauling) but they didn't crew them. Exclusion continued.

Probably the main reason they didn’t sail was superstition. The ages-old defensive belief that women at sea brought ill-luck was so strongly entrenched that women could or would not challenge it. They either respected brave men’s convictions or had a sense of impossibility; there were better things to spend your energy on.

Newbiggin by the Sea have a great website about their launchers. http://www.newbigginbythesea.co.uk/lifeboat/history.htm. And its historian, Richard Martin, is a godsend for explorers like me.

One of the Newbiggin launchers, cleaner Bella Arkle, said of a 1927 launch:

‘Rain speared down from black skies, a howling freezing gale tore at the roots of the fishermen’s cottages by the shoreline, a boiling sea was thundering ashore with huge combers breaking over the rocks in a fury of spume…

when the alarm went off I ran to the Lifeboat house where all the women were gathering. The weather had really turned bad when the Lifeboat was brought out and got into the water but waves threw it back. We had to straighten her up by wading right in. I was up to my neck that day, but we managed to get the boat away

… all the fishing boats were brought back safely. In fact the boat was out for three hours and the Newbiggin womenfolk for the most part waited on the foreshore in their wet clothes, facing into the gale, to help haul the Lifeboat in. That… was tradition.'


I really appreciate the help of Sue Hennessy in helping me understand their situation. In October she is bringing out a book about women's contribution to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, published by the History Press, Stroud. (see pic).