Turning the tide on gender barriers

THERE is no industry today where women have not shown their mettle and worth. While their entry into the maritime trade came late with all the age-old seafaring superstitions, prejudices and cultural barriers, women seafarers have gradually worked their way out into the sea while the others scaled the maritime corporate ladder.

Such is the case for Jannicke Steen-Utvik, daughter of two great maritime nations from both ends of the globe. Her father was from Norway, famed to be the fourth-largest merchant marine country in the world, and her mother was from the Philippines, an archipelago known to be a major seafaring nation.