Women rising in ranks on merchant ships

updated 2:53 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2009

ISTANBUL - Somali pirates who seize ships for ransom currently hold more than 100 captive mariners, including a rarity in the male-dominated shipping industry — a woman officer.

Women like Aysun Akbay, a 24-year-old Turk, are slowly making inroads into the upper levels of seafaring, a profession more resistant than most to female command. Women have long worked on passenger ships, but they are increasingly enduring the risks and hardships of life on merchant vessels, a key engine of global commerce.

Akbay, a third officer, was on the MV Horizon-1 cargo vessel when it was hijacked July 9 in the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia, and has said by satellite telephone from captivity that the two-dozen crew members had not been harmed.

"The pirates told Aysun that she could call her family when she wants because she is a woman, but Aysun calls us only when others get the chance to call their families, too. She tells us not to worry," said her sister, Aysen.

Most of the world's shipping routes are relatively safe, but Somali piracy — among the security woes of a lawless land where al-Qaida-linked militants are waging a violent insurgency — has surged more than 50 percent this year despite an international effort to stem the scourge.

Pirates usually release ships after a ransom payment, with negotiations often taking months. The crime will be a major topic at an annual forum on Sept. 16-18 in London of a group led by female managers in the maritime industry.

More women on board
Founded in 1974, the Women's International Shipping & Trading Association, or WISTA, reported a membership increase of 40 percent in the past two years, with 20 country branches and more than 1,000 individual members.

The Geneva-based International Labor Office said in a 2003 book that 1 percent to 2 percent of the world's 1.25 million seafarers were women, many of them caterers on ferries and cruise liners. The labor group believes those figures have not changed significantly. There are no global figures for women ship commanders or officers; people familiar with the industry say the number is increasing, mostly in the West, though they remain a tiny fraction of the total.

"In the old times, men thought that this job cannot be done by a woman. Before, they believed a woman on board brings bad luck," said Bianca Froemming, a German ship commander who has traveled to Asia, Africa and the Americas. "It is harder for a woman. You have to show more on board, you always have to work harder than a man to become higher in rank."

Froemming, who is taking two years off to care for her baby son, said she plans to go back to sea with her employer, shipping firm Reederei Rudolf Schepers. Her career has other dimensions: during long voyages, she worked on "Genius of Horror," a German-language novel about a maritime student with murder on her mind that has sold several thousand copies.

There are at least five German female masters, or commanders, on German-flagged merchant vessels, out of a total of 1,400 masters. The South African navy has its first female commander of a patrol vessel. In 2007, Royal Caribbean International named the first female captain in its cruise ship fleet, a Swede with a background in cargo shipping.

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