There's an old seafaring superstition that says women are bad luck at sea. It's a trope that Nicholine Tifuh Azirh, a second officer with Celebrity Cruises, even heard when she was training for her maritime career, according to the cruise line's chief executive officer.
But next year, Tifuh Azirh and 26 of her colleagues at the Miami-based cruise company will set sail on the Celebrity Edge seeking to make history and prove a larger point about women working in the cruise industry. The March 8 trip — International Women's Day, not coincidentally — will be led by an all-female bridge and officer team, Celebrity announced last month.
The idea came out of a meeting cruise line executives had this year. Celebrity, which has a female CEO, had celebrated the women's holiday in the past. But they wanted to make a bigger splash, and the marketing and public relations team suggested an all-female team on the bridge, or operational control center.
"I wasn't sure we could pull it off," says CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo. "I said, 'Could we actually do this? Do we actually have women in every single position on the bridge where we could put together an entire bridge team for one ship?'"
Her staff was confident. Within approximately two days, the entire bridge was staffed with women.
But the idea didn't stop there. Lutoff-Perlo said the company has worked hard to hire women for "hotel-side," too, overseeing areas such as culinary, financial, guest services, housekeeping and medical. The next thought was: "Wouldn't it be great if every major decision or function onboard was run by a woman?"
That's how the group of women from 17 countries got assembled for the trip. They will be in roles including captain, hotel director, staff captain, doctor, cruise director, food and beverage director, safety investigation officer, environmental officer and third engineer.
Captain Kate McCue, who became the first female American cruise ship captain in 2015, has been referring to the bunch as "Ocean's 27."
Lutoff-Perlo said the March 8 cruise is possible only because of the work the line has done in recent years to diversify the fleet's workforce, especially on the bridge.
"I don't think anybody realizes how difficult it is to find women for these positions," Lutoff-Perlo says. She said the company, which is part of Royal Caribbean Cruises, has dealt with maritime academies where less than 20% of the student body is female and women are only about 10% of the graduating class. Factor in the complexity of living on a ship for months at a time, as well as societal expectations, and the job becomes even tougher.
Still, Lutoff-Perlo said she wants to keep raising the bar. She said she would consider it a "stellar" achievement to get to 35% of women in bridge roles.
More cruise lines have highlighted their own women in leadership in recent years. On International Women's Day this year, Regent Seven Seas Cruises said that one of its captains, Serena Melani, would be the first woman in the industry to captain a new ocean ship at the time of its launch. In 2016, Windstar Cruises introduced captain Belinda Bennett as the first black female captain in commercial cruising. And newcomer Virgin Voyages appointed a woman, Wendy Williams, as captain of its first ship launching next year.
Travel on 12/08/2019