Wednesday 30 March 2011

Woman engineer on ships, Christine Shurrock


Today's Financial Times has an interesting article about a woman engineer working at sea: 'Interview: A life as the only female on board', by Peter Whitehead.

Under the FT's terms and conditions I can't post any of it here. But you can read it at:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/20860ed2-5ad2-11e0-8900-00144feab49a.html#axzz1I76SDxhr

Essentially Christine Shurrock, who works for Cable and Wireless, was the sole woman on her trips to repair under-sea cables. Now a manager with an MBA she describes her work, and says at sea she missed female company, but was treated as a professional.

It sounds like this obviously competent person has succeeded partly because the (male) managers in her company have been so very supportive. Repeatedly in looking at women working at sea I've seen that this is how women manage to do high-flying maritime jobs. Without that enlightened backing from men even the most brilliant women find it a hard and lonely path.

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