DW news source talks about sexual abuse at sea.
Sexist remarks, discrimination, sexual assault
Sexist remarks, discrimination, sexual assault — these are part of everyday life for many female workers on ships. Usually, they say nothing. But one woman broke the silence.
It was her childhood dream to become a seafarer — it took just a week for it to be shattered. Speaking with DW, Ann (full name known to editors) chose her words carefully.
“Yeah, when you’re a woman, you have some bad experiences,” she said. But later, she added that she was raped in just her second week at the marine college she attended in the United Kingdom, when she was only 16 years old.
At the time, Ann was ashamed and told no one about what had happened. Today, the British woman said she didn’t want her dream to end before it even began. On cargo ships, the proportion of female seafarers is just 2% of 1.5 million employees, and most are the only women on their ship.
‘Alone’ and ‘nowhere to go’
But even on the new ship, Ann experienced more assaults. She recalled how the officer responsible for her training became a new persecutor. He made sure she always worked with him alone in the hold, where no one else could see them. She lived in constant fear of assault, seeing her tormentor at every meal.
One evening, she stepped out of the shower to find the officer in her room. He stared at her and grinned. Even in her cabin, she was not safe.
Ann reported the officer, only to be told by a man in human resources that she should have expected it. What was her father thinking, sending her out to sea, the man asked, adding that he would never have sent his daughter to work on ships. From then on, she said, she knew she was alone: “I had nowhere to go.”
There are many cases like Ann’s. Rachel Glynn-Williams, a psychologist who counsels people who work on ships, told DW that of all the female seafarers she had met over the years, only one said she had never experienced anything like this.
Ann stuck to her job for 12 years, sailing all over the world — to Central America, around the Middle East. As each journey began, she wondered whether this time there would be a man among the crew who might create problems. She learned to avoid certain colleagues and to wear what she refers to as “the right clothes.”
Eventually, she was on the verge of becoming a captain herself. Even though the physical violations became less frequent over the years, the whispered insults, the leering looks and the bullying via social media remained. And, she said, they always came with the implicit message: A woman has no business on board a ship. Eventually, she took a job ashore. It was almost as if the harassers won, she told DW.
Ann’s experiences are not unique. The Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association surveyed 1,128 female seafarers from 78 countries on the issue last year. Some 60% of the women reported they had experienced misogynistic discrimination on board, while 25% of respondents said physical and sexual harassment was common and that they had experienced having their privacy invaded on a ship.
Shipping companies ‘look the other way’
It’s a small miracle that these numbers even exist, because very few cases are reported to the police. Victims are reluctant to come forward because they often have to work in close proximity to their attackers for months. Becky Newdick, CEO of Safer Waves, an NGO that helps victims anonymously, said many young women do not want to put their careers at risk.
And even if they report incidents, they face even more challenges. The nearest doctors and relevant police authorities are often thousands of miles away, making investigations and evidence recovery even more difficult than they are on land.
Since ship’s crews change often, potential witnesses become difficult to find. In addition, when a crime takes place in the middle of international waters, it is rarely clear under which jurisdiction or law it should be investigated, said Newdick.
Glynn-Williams said the culture of the industry is part of the problem. “But what can be even more awful and more protracted is the stuff that comes afterwards. How they were responded to, how their suffering is narrated and understood,” she told DW. To this day, some women are still blamed — and the ways to report an incident are too complicated and burdensome.
Her patients would often hear advice such as “Just smile it off,” “You know how he is — just stay out of his way,” and “It’s a man’s world, get used to it,” Glynn-Williams said. “It’s almost like it’s the victim’s job to either put up with it or to protect themselves from it rather than actually identifying the source of threat and danger and removing that.”
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Source: DW
