Rainbow Warrior's female captain, Hettie Geenen, gets on with it in Manila

Here are two articles from the Philippines about Hettie Geenen, arising from a Greenpeace press conference in Manila earlier this month.

Article 1, GMA NEWS ONLINE, 13 March, How she gets it done: Hettie Geenen, the female captain of the Rainbow Warrior ship, http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/lifestyle/travel/646394/how-she-gets-it-done-hettie-geenen-the-female-captain-of-the-rainbow-warrior-ship/story/

GREENPEACE'S ONLY, BUT NOT FIRST, FEMALE CAPTAIN

'“It’s just a job, like everybody has a job,” Hettie Geenen brushes off the distinction that comes with her job. She is the female captain of recent Manila visitor, Rainbow Warrior, the only female captain of the environmentalist group in fact — “but not the first,” she quickly contends.
“I’ve been sailing since I was younger, most of the time with men too, so for me, this is very normal,” the sailor says.“But I respect people who are not used to this. Like me, in the beginning, when I saw female bus drivers. I had to look twice. You don’t judge, you just look twice.”
The lady sailor gave us an idea how she got into this profession, the kind of life the job entails, and the joy it brings.

BEING A CAPTAIN

"In the Philippines, when we had authorities visit the ship, they asked where the captain was. I said, ‘sorry I’m the captain.’ And I find they don’t really treat me differently. When I treat them with respect, they treat me with respect.
"It’s very important to follow your heart, and to not let what you want be stopped by anybody. Maybe you think there are a lot of barriers, but there are none. I really don’t like to be in the picture, but if I can be an example to someone younger, who wants to do something different, she can see that I did it.
"I never wanted to become a captain. I like to be practical and busy. I like to work a little bit more in the background, and as a captain, you’re in the spotlight. But after a while, you realize you have to step up. I’ve been a skipper on a lot of vessels for 12 years, so I thought, let’s do it! I have been chief mate for almost 15 years.
No one day is ever the same, but I have to say as captain, spending a lot of time behind the computer and preparing reports is not my favorite part of the job. The job of captain these days involve a lot of administration and communication. I spend a lot of time inside. But when my sailors need me, I’m there. Last night, I woke up four times to go to the bridge and check. I did a little maneuver with the sailors. It can get very busy.

COMBINING PERSONAL LIFE

"I’m not married but I have a partner for many years. He is a seafarer as well, which makes it a little bit easier. When I’m home, sometimes he’s still at sea, but we both understand each other’s lives. We know each other from Greenpeace. We don’t have children. I would’ve loved to have children, but sometimes, it doesn’t happen. I always say that on board, this is my family.
It was his birthday yesterday and I wasn’t home. Especially when you don’t have children, or family [it can be difficult] but you find another way. This is just how life is. We are three months at sea and at the end of three months, you really want to go home, and if they ask you to stay another week, it’s really hard.
But I wouldn’t have it another way. Sometimes, I think I want to stay home but no. I really think I have a great job. And the nice thing is with my partner, because we don’t see each other, when we finally do, it’s almost like starting again. It has positive sides for sure.

Article 2. PHILIPPINES DAILY INQUIRER. The captain of the Greenpeace ship is a woman
http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/289851/captain-greenpeace-ship-woman/

Jill Tan Radovan of Philippine Daily Inquirer wrote this story and took this photo, which appeared on 25 March 2018.

"Films and literature tell us one thing about ship captains: The captain is almost always a man. The captain in “Titanic” was a man. Jack Sparrow from “Pirates of the Caribbean” is male; Captain Hook, too, menacing with a mean mustache at that. Reality, however, can opt otherwise.
Hettie Geenen, captain of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior, is a woman. She leads a team of 16 dedicated crew members, sailing around the world and fighting for climate justice. Hettie has been sailing since she was 13 years old. She joined Greenpeace in 1999 as Third Mate, and her first voyage on the Rainbow Warrior brought her to Manila.


'SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING'

She recalls a distinct but sad memory from that trip.“Here we met a girl who lived in Clark Air Base. She was sick; sick because they had to leave their home after the eruption of a volcano. They moved to the former US airbase but the soil and water there was contaminated. Lots of the children became sick and the women had miscarriages. This girl had leukemia, and had one last dream—to visit the Rainbow Warrior,” said Geenen in a media conference during the Rainbow Warrior’s recent voyage to Manila.
“After a protest at the US Embassy, we invited these children and their mothers to the ship. The captain at that time sailed in a rip around the harbor with the children. She was at the helm. He let her drive. She had a huge smile on her face.”The child passed on an hour after, at only 6 years old. Geenen continues, “After this I was convinced; this is the job I want to do. I want to be part of this platform, giving people a voice. Someone needs to speak up. We need to do something.”
After almost 20 years, Geenen, now the Rainbow Warrior’s captain, still feels the same, and is ever as passionate about Greenpeace’s fight for climate justice. She admits that being a woman in a job dominated by men has both its ups and downs.

MALE REACTIONS TO WOMEN CAPTAINS

“They look at you more critically. Probably if I make a mistake, it will be perceived differently. On the other hand, it helps. People look twice just because it’s not something that you see a lot.”
“What I see now, when authorities from the Philippines come onboard, they ask for the captain. And then I apologize and say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m the captain.’ They are all very humbled and say, ‘I’m really sorry, but we didn’t expect a woman.’”
Does she think women are vulnerable, and does she feel vulnerable as a woman? “It depends. I cannot say that women are not. I have never felt vulnerable, but I come from another country. So I cannot say… on the ship, in the lifeboats, the priority is still the women and the children.”

GENDER SEPARATION. NO THANKS

“I think it’s important that women don’t separate so much. We need to move together, men and women. You can separate at first but you need to connect and be equals.”“I think it’s time we equalize so that we have more women in certain positions. Women do things differently; not necessarily better, but differently. At the moment we have mostly men in power, and I think it should be more equal.”
For her, there is one aspect of one’s character necessary if you want to pursue a life at sea.“You need to be able to live in a closed space with a lot of people, without the ones you want—you don’t choose. You have to respect and accept everybody.”

GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY

Geenen has moved from Third Mate to Second Mate, and then to Chief Mate, before finally being appointed as the captain of the Rainbow Warrior on International Women’s Day two years ago.“The biggest learning is that we are all obliged to do something. We cannot sit at home and do nothing. It is for our children, and also for the Earth. I think if you do nothing, you are as guilty as those doing things to make the world a worse place to live in.” "

Soviet women commanding ships

Pic: Valentina Orlikova and colleagues on the bridge of WW2 merchant ship

In surfing yet again for women seafarers’ history in different countries I realised that a new researcher doing the same thing,looking for Soviet women at sea, could easily be under a big misapprehension.
The prominence on the internet of Soviet pioneers Anna Shchetinina and Valentina Orlikova might lead people to think they were exceptions, like Victoria Drummond.(This British marine engineer pictured below was, like them, breaking through in the 1930s.)

In fact, Captains Valentina and Anna were two of many thousands of Soviet women in the merchant navy from the 1930s who did ‘men's' jobs: deck, engineering and radio work, rather than hotel-side work.
~ Anna Shchetinina (1908-1999) certainly was the first Soviet woman in the world to serve as a certificated captain of an ocean-going vessel. (see pics below, and many other images on the excellent Russian-language website about Anna: http://ljwanderer.livejournal.com/150094.html)

~ And Valentina Orlikova(1915-1991), with her movie-star looks, certainly was the most internationally-fancied woman deck officer in the world. Her high profile was created after she was featured in a USSR/ New York publicity drive in 1943.
But evidence of the mass of women is hard to find, even for Russian speakers. Use the search term 'women sailors' on the RIA Novosti press agency site and there’s just an implausibly smiling woman cleaning up a nuclear ship in 1964, and a young woman on Far East service, who looks rather planted.

A much-admired media icon
By contrast to the now-invisibility of the mass of Soviet women merchant seafarers, the Milwaukee Journal of February 28 1943 headlined an article ‘Pretty little Soviet girl is officer on cargo ship.’

And the Illinois Alton Evening Telegraph celebrated Valentina:
‘Any preconceived pictures you have of Soviet women as tall husky Amazons will have to be revised for Orlikova. She is four feet ten. Gray eyes. Brown hair. Slender little figure in a dark blue suit. She is the wife of a Soviet seaman and the mother of a two year-old boy.
‘In stormy weather or calm seas she stands her watch on the bridge, helping direct navigation through mine-sown and submarine-infested waters. She has directed the evacuation of a ship truck by a mine and has leapt from a flaming vessel into the sea, o be rescued by a submarine. And she talks about it more calmly than most people discuss rationed hoes.’
US writer Anais Nin wrote:
<'A photo of her had appeared, which all of us fell in love with... She conveyed firmness and capability, without hardness or coldness. She became a symbol of woman’s most secret wishes: to be free and in command of her own destiny, responsible without loss of her womanliness.

'We wanted to imitate Valentina Orlikova. We saw ourselves trim, efficient, capable captains of our ship and our own lives. It was not a desire to be a man, but be free and capable of self-direction and professional growth.’ And Nin cross-dressed in her husband’s tuxedo and cut her hair short, in emulation.
So wartime needs for women’s labour, and new temporary alliances of Allied powers, were helped by her not being fitting the burly Russian Bear stereotype. The message was that you could be cute AND a tough worker and a married Mom - and someone from the land of Communism.

(Pic: Anais Nin cross-dressed,from http://pensaleas.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/anac3afs-nin.jpg)

Realities
The reality was that Valentina Orlikova was a dual-ticketed engineer and deck officer, aged 28. And one of thousands of women who were in the USSR merchant fleet long before the war started.
The socialist revolution gave many rights to women, including doctors and scientists, which were astonishing in other countries. By 1933 British economist Sidney Webb had recorded that there was ‘a steadily increasing number’ of women sailors, engineers and wireless operators, usually dressed in trousers. They went to marine training schools along with men.
When they docked in foreign ports the women were seen as novelties and featured in the press.
For example when the Chelyuskinet arrived in New York with exhibits from the Soviet Pavilion at the Worlds Fair in February 1939, the women officers along with what we could call ‘stewardesses’ were pictured by a news agency(see picture below.)

Caption: Left to right Uliana Lebedeva, Mess Girl; Elizabeth Gierorga-Pulo, Radio Operator; Galina Gradsaya, Second Mate; and Nina Todory, Mess Girl.


Wartime
The Soviet defensive navy had the same trouble as most defensive navies in letting women sail in this all-male organisation in WW2. (Finally the USSR did. Britain didn’t, except very exceptionally. And the Canadian navy rejected women radio officers, who instead joined the Scandinavian merchant vessels)
According to historians Markwick and Cardona, 21,000 women worked in the USSR's defensive navy. Some rose as high as captains in the Amur River Fleet, sailing on the relatively safe Amur and Sungari rivers. Those on the Astrakhan, carrying and ammunition, troops, wounded people, and supplies, were much decorated. In the Black Sea Fleet were 2,854 women.
Not all were seagoing and they faced misogyny. Captain Taisa Rudenko-Sheveleva, the first woman naval officer, who had got in by pretending to be a man, said cats and women were traditionally seen as unlucky.
By comparison, the intensively-trained professional seafarers Anna and Valentina were some of the long-accepted technical officers on merchant vessels routinely going deep-sea in dangerous waters, including the horrific Murmansk route.

~ Captain Anna was transporting cargo in the Baltic. She took part in the ‘Russian Dunkirk’, on one of the 190 ships of the Baltic Fleet evacuating people from Tallinn in August 1941. She was also sailing as master of a Liberty ship, transporting Lend-lease supplies from the US, and therefore at great risk of Axis attack.
~ Valentina was working as a mate on cargo ships, including as fourth mate on the armed Dvina, sailing from Archangel to New York in 1942 and 1943 delivering US arms to the USSR.
She’d been ‘serving as mate on hospital ship in the Baltic Sea … the Nazis sowed mines directly in our path. Our ship hit one of them. I shall never forget the terrible moments that followed – the explosions, the flames, the wounded all around needing help – and through it all the faces of my women comrades, strong and heroic…[the water rose, the ship listed]
‘I was on the upper deck, in charge of lowering lifeboats … Despite the frightful danger facing everyone on ship, my heart was calm. I saw there was no room here for weakness. All the women around me, young and old, nurses and crew members, were working quickly, efficiently, confidently….I did not see any of the women make even a gesture towards saving their own lives.’
The ship managed to get to a small island where the wounded were unloaded. The ship temporarily repaired so that it could limp to the home port and be properly repaired.
When ‘the wounded were re-embarked and the ship ready to sail again, I ordered the women to take some rest. With tired, but happy, smiles, they refused …noiselessly they glided through the cabin helping to bring back to health those who had been wounded,’ she told the US media.

In typical ‘women can do it’ and Rosie the Riveter style, the Alton Evening Telegraph reported ‘Orlikova is the only woman mate on her ship. But she does not intend to stop there. Her ambition is to be a ship's captain. She thinks in three more years she should make it.
‘"It's good to have women on ships," she says. "They keep everything clean and in good condition. They are exact as doctors and radio operators, too. And they are not afraid of anything." Have any of Orlikova's order ever been questioned because she was a woman. "Never," she says with a grin.’


COURAGEOUS SOVIET WOMEN SEAFARERS
• Anna Shchetinina (Captain on numerous vessels)
• Valentina Orlikova (Captain of Storm, etc)
• Vera Mitsai (First Mate of whaler Typhoon)
• Alla Rezner (First Mate)
• Lydia Kochetkova (Second Mate)
• Nadejda Zabardayeva (Radio Telegraphist)
• Vera Gorlova (Radio Telegraphist)
• Nadejda Neoslenaya (Surgeon's Assistant)


Pic: Unnamed WW2 woman in Pacific Fleet landing party on their way to Port-Arthur,Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 1945.Photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei. Courtesy of RIA Novosti.

After the war
Both Anna and Valentina women survived the war, and were much decorated.

~ Captain Shchetinina went on to captain six ships of the Soviet Baltic Shipping Company, MV Askold, Baskunchak, Beloostrov, Dniester, Pskov, and Mendeleev. Then, aged 41 in 1949 she came ashore and taught in the Leningrad Marine Engineering College College where Valentina had studied two decades earlier. Anna later became Dean and wrote a very entertaining lifestory, not yet translated.

(Pictures from http://ljwanderer.livejournal.com/150094.html, with thanks)

~ Captain Orlikova worked on whalers sailing to the Far East from 1947-53. Under international law Russian-style factory whaling was illegal and controversial. She attained her dream to be captain, working on Storm.
Many women were on whalers in both 'male' roles such as scientists and radio officers, and in domestic roles such as cooks, and laundry. Valentina never got the same publicity again.

Pic: Soviet whaler Aleut, 1958. Photo by Yulia Ivashchenko

It’s rather peculiar that the progressive trend of women doing ‘men’s work’ at sea didn’t continue in the USSR. However though this 1960s photo of some Soviet women seafarers visiting Warsash Maritime Centre (now Academy) in Hampshire, indicates they not only existed but traveled. In the 1980s there was at least one woman, Valentina Plutova, a First Officer.


Yet when Nina Baker, Britain’s second women deck officer, sailed to the USSR in the 1970s Soviet officers (male) deliberately visited her ship to see this phenomenon: a woman on the bridge.
(This blog entry is part of a longer article to be published elsewhere, later. Suggestions for additions are welcome.)

Milestones in Royal Navy equal opps - achieved with feminist agency

Sarah West: commanding.Picture by Leading Airman M Hogan, Crown Copyright/MOD 2011

Commander Sarah West (40) on May 27 became the first woman to command a major warship in the British Royal Navy. She joined the Type 23 frigate HMS Portland in Rosyth. It's only taken 450 years.

Looking at the media coverage is interesting. Everyone is for it, apart from the odd misogynist tweeter. Everyone says that of course she must be a highly competent person, gender aside, because you don't rise to such heights otherwise. The Navy can't afford to let just any new driver loose on its pricey real estate. An estimated 93 per cent of men don't reach command level.

'Commander West said:"Taking command of HMS Portland is definitely the highlight of my 16 years in the RN so far. It is a challenge that I am fully trained for and ready to undertake."'

'Commander West, who lives in Middlesex, joined the RN in 1995.Born and educated in Lincolnshire, she graduated from the University of Hertfordshire with an honours degree in mathematics. Trained as a warfare officer, she has had a number of sea appointments, which included a deployment to the Gulf... She commanded HMS Ramsey, HMS Penzance, HMS Pembroke and most recently HMS Shoreham as part of the 1st Mine Countermeasures Squadron.'

So when/how did it become alright to have women in such top roles?

And what has it taken? 40 years of battling for equal rights to reach this point. Many career failures and many life-wrecking anti-discrimination cases preceded this victory. Sarah West's promotion could not have occurred without hundreds of courageous women and men battling for decades for change within the Navy, WRNS and maybe the MoD. So let's raise a glass to them.

To celebrate the progress the MoD published a list of milestones that tell the story. See http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/PeopleInDefence/MilestonesReachedForWomenInTheRoyalNavy.htm.

It omits the role of some very clever quietly feminist campaigners, of obstructions and of statistics, which can put matters in perspective. So in the interests of justice this is an slightly amended version.

My changes are in bold. And my statistical calculations are open to challenge, but based on the best that can be from data on the internet research. I'll be doing fuller calculations with MoD stats later.

KEY POINTS IN WOMEN'S NAVAL HISTORY

1917: The Women’s Royal Naval Service is launched following heavy naval losses in the first world war and a manperson power shortage and pressure by high-powered feminists. It's headed by a suffragist with naval family, Katharine Furse. But women are not allowed to do seagoing work. Wrens number 7,000 at peak, one per cent of naval forces (407,316. Britain's is the largest navy in the world with 700 ships.

1919: WRNS are disbanded The total 100 per cent of the remaining 4,281 women lose their role, by comparison to 61 per cent of the men in the navy (from 407,316 in 1918 to 192,000, but 640,000 served in total). Ex-Wrens continue to develop women's maritime skills through the Sea Rangers. The Association of Wrens keeps up the solidarity and pride

1939: WRNS are re-formed with the onset of the second world war numbering 74,000 women doing 200 different jobs. But less than 100 are allowed to work deep sea, despite their willingness to do so. Many use the opportunity to work on small boats, sail out to moored ships as boarding officers, and to travel overseas. Vera Laughton Mathews, the director is a former journalist for suffrage journals and also from a naval family. The navy has at least 700 ships. There are 923,000 men in the Royal Navy in WW2, at peak, so the WRNS are one twelfth the size.

1946: WRNS are reduced to 3,000, just 4 per cent of their wartime total. This compares to male staffing levels being cut to 20 per cent of the former total (By 1947 there were 195,000 men in the Navy as opposed to 923,000 at peak). Britain's is now the second largest navy in the world, after the US, with 800 commissioned ships that year. Again the Association of Wrens keeps up the solidarity and pride.

1974: An impartial survey takes place, which finds women should be integrated in the Royal Navy.

1976 WRNS officers' training is integrated with naval men's training, at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. This means that men start being able to see for themselves that women can be competent and are human beings, not an inferior but charming sub-species.

1990: Because of a lack of sufficiently competent male applicants, navy formally allows women to go to sea with men. In fact they'd been wangling ways to do so for years.

1994. The WRNS becomes part of the Royal Navy. Officially 'Wrens' no longer exist; naval women personnel do.

2009: Medic Kate Nesbitt is the first woman in the Royal Navy to be awarded the military cross after braving Taliban fire to tend a fallen comrade in Afghanistan.WW2 Wrens had earlier won awards for bravery.

2011: Navy says women will join men aboard submarines from 2013, many years after other navies had accepted them. The excuses that there was not enough space for separate toilets, and that nuclear subs might affect unborn children seems to have dropped away.

2012: The first female commander of a major Royal Navy warship Cdr Sarah West takes charge of HMS Portland. The MoD says it expects three more vessels will be commanded by women by the end of this year, meaning 5 per cent of its 79 commissioned ships. The number of women has dropped from 4,535 in 1990 to 3,400 today. They are 10 per cent of the total 34,4000 people in the Royal Navy. Some roles are still closed to women. In terms of personnel, the UK is no longer in the top ten of the world's navies. In terms of tonnage it's fourth after the US, China, and Russia. The US has 369,000 personnel and 430+ ships.

Celebrating women in command at sea

Two women have just got leading jobs at sea. I wish we could say "So what?"
But actually it is still a remarkable feat. So congratulations not only to to Johanna Kwedhi (lower pic)and Nora W Tyson (top pic) themselves, but those who've been brave enough to let them succeed, and to those who've supported them.

US NAVY
The unease that's being expressed on the web about Rear Adm. Tyson's appointment shows just how hard a fight it still is for women in power on ships to have their expertise recognised. See http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/69719858/m/9670032652001

31 years after joining the US Navy,last Thursday(Aug 5)Nora W Tyson assumed command of Carrier Strike Group Two. The strike group consists of aircraft carrier George W Bush, four guided-missile cruisers; Destroyer Squadron 22, which includes six guided-missile destroyers and two frigates, and Carrier Air Wing 8, with eight squadrons of aircraft.

Tyson said "As far as the trailblazing piece, I understand I am the first woman on the job," she said. "But I'm a professional just like my fellow officers are, and my fellow strike group commanders."

Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, said her appointment should send a signal "that there is no limit as to what you can do."

I myself feel 'If only such a claim were true.' And while it's good to see women progress, politically I regret that she is working for such a belligerent country.

NAMIBIA FISHING
By contrast, Johanna Kwedhi is Namibia's first female trawler captain, in charge of 23 crew. See a video of her at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10893469.

The BBC reports: "Johanna captains the Kanus, one of the largest trawlers operating from Luderitz Harbour... It's her responsibility not only to navigate a coastline infamous for shipwrecks, but to bring in a profitable catch.

Trained by the Namibian Fisheries Institute, she was appointed skipper after serving for eight years as an officer and chief mate under a Spanish captain. Her company now has four more women doing similar training.

"This is a man's world," says Bosun Evalisto Shipo. "Since the beginning, it's been a man's world. If your leadership is not appropriate for the crew, you will not earn their respect."

And Captain Kwedhi has done so - while breaking another barrier too. "We have never seen a black person in charge of a ship," says Evalisto Shipo. "It has always been a Spanish person actually."

What a competent woman she must be, to succeed despite such odds, as well as being the single parent of a 14-month-old son, Innocent.

P&O's first woman captain

Finally, more women are becoming captains of cruise ships. After 173 years P&O cruises has appointed its first woman 'Master.' Having served 21 years with the company Captain Breton now commands the 1,200-passenger Artemis.

This is a download from P&O's website, 20.4.2010:

'Captain Sarah Breton said: “Growing up near the water I always loved boats and the ocean, so it really does fulfil a lifelong ambition of mine to be a Captain with P&O Cruises. It is made even more special to be Captain of the first cruise ship I ever served on, after joining P&O Cruises as third officer back in 1989.”

Sarah, now 45, has served on board Royal Princess (now Artemis), Sky Princess, Canberra, Pacific Princess (the original Love Boat), Grand Princess and Star Princess as third officer, second officer, navigator, first officer and safety officer. She was first promoted to staff captain in 2001 on the original Pacific Princess and then went on to serve onboard Coral Princess, Tahitian Princess, the new Pacific Princess, Artemis and most recently Ocean Village.

Captain Breton lives on the Essex Coast and when on leave spends her time in the garden, sailing - whenever the weather permits, and watching Six Nations rugby and Formula One motor racing.'