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More women cruising into career at sea

Santanu Sanyal

THE SPECTACULAR growth in cruise shipping has led to an interesting development: The demand for women seafarers has reached an unprecedented level. A recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) report on seafarers' living and working condi tion suggests that the growing cruise industry recruits women crew members to meet up to 30 per cent of their requirement. However, as the report points out, there is no systematic way of recruiting the women seafarers.

Thus, Western women mainly rely on advertisements to find jobs with cruise lines. A small number is recruited by `word of mouth'. In the West, the role of a recruiting agent is limited to collecting information on job vacancies and sending it in the form of booklets or newsletters to prospective applicants. Normally, the agent does not provide any training, nor does he conduct any interviews for the applicants. However, the practices adopted by the agents in Asia are different.

First, the Asian women depend on their friends and relatives for information and on agents not only for recruitment but also for training which is a thriving business in many countries. For example, in many countries, particularly in non-English-speaking ones, English language classes are held and tests undertaken by many agents to screen applicants for shortlists. Next, a much stricter age restriction is enforced for women than for men. As the report indicates, in the Philippines the ceiling for men to be employed on cruise ships is 40 years while for women, it is 29.

Finally, most crew recruiting agents in Asia, being much smaller in size and less organised than their counterparts in the West, charge seafarers, in violation of accepted standards and legislation, for their services and sometimes overcharge for sub-sta ndard training. Some agents insist on financial bonds to ensure that the seafarers employed for a given period complete the contract to the satisfaction of the cruise company. There have been many cases of women applicants being cheated by unscrupulous a gents, who collect money and bonds only to disappear without providing any service.

The labour market for women seafarers is highly unorganised, especially for Asian women keen on joining cruise ships and this will continue to be so as long as there is a mismatch between demand and supply. The growth of the cruise shipping has boosted t he demand for women crew for catering and supply service with no corresponding increase in the systematic supply of trained such crew.

According to the ILO report, the number of cruise ships (1000 gross tonnage and above) in the world cruise fleet has risen from 147 in 1980 to 225 in 1998 with the gross tonnage rising from 20,45,000 to 63,07,000 and the number of passengers carried from 1.5 million to 7.5 million. With the cruise sector looking for economies of scale, the trend is for mega-ships of 100,000 gross tonnage or over with berth capacity of 3000-plus passengers. For example, one of the major cruise vessels, Voyager of the Sea s, owned by Royal Caribbean International, has a displacement of 142,000 tonnes and carrying capacity of 3,000 passengers and 900 crew.

Considerable economies of scale are obtained by operating large cruise ships with 2,000-3,000 berths. Both the capital and operating cost per passenger decreases with the increase in the ship size. Most such vessels are owned by companies in the US, Norw ay and the UK and fly the flags of open registry of the Bahamas, Liberia or Panama. The ships are built mainly in Europe. There are ten major owning/operating companies and the top five include Carnival/Airtours, Royal Caribbean, P&O Group, Norwegian Cru ise Line and Star Cruise. The entry costs being high, only few firms dominate the cruise scene and the merger rate is high.

Worldwide estimates of the number of women working on vessels vary. The ILO report quotes figures to show that in the 1990s, women's share of the total seafaring workforce was five per cent in Indonesia and Latvia, about three per cent in Australia and 0 .5 per cent in New Zealand. In the Philippines, which is considered the biggest supplier of seafarers to the world merchant fleet, only 225 women out of a total of 230,000 seafarers appeared on the national seafarers' register in 1983-90. India has 43,00 0 registered seafarers, including three women. In China, the China Ocean Shipping Company, with the world's largest fleet of 600 vessels and 47,000 seafarers, has stopped employing women on cargo ships since the mid-1980s. China saw it last woman captain withdrawing from seafaring in 1994.

Another interesting feature of women seafarers is consistent occupation segregation. In Germany and Denmark, the proportions of women among seafarers are 15.1 per cent 5.3 per cent respectively but the majority of them are employed in the service and cat ering sectors. In Australia, 62 per cent of the women seafarers are employed as catering attendants and 86 per cent of Swedish women seafarers are hired in supply service on ferries. In the UK, 81 per cent of the women seafarers fall within the category of ratings and cadets and only 19 per cent as officers.

``Such a severely segregated labour force in the EU fleet mirrors the gender construction of the sea-going labour force internationally,'' adds the ILO report.