COURTING WOMEN
Industry looking for new ways to close its gender gap, opening career paths that some didn’t know existed
By Beth Rosenberg / Staff Writer
b.rosenberg@tradeonlytoday.com
Barry Acker, president of The Landing School,
recalls going to a supermarket last year and
having the cashier — a young woman in her
early 20s — ask him what The Landing School was.
After Acker explained that the school prepared people for careers in boatbuilding, the cashier told him
she’d never thought about the fact that someone
builds boats. Although she lives in coastal Maine,
within a few miles of the school, it had never occurred to her that boatbuilding could be a viable career for a young woman.
Acker, and others in the industry,
want to change that mindset.
“I think we need to do a better job of
educating women about the opportunities in the industry and really target
them through our admissions process
and our marketing process,” he says.
The same, he says, holds true for the industry as a whole.
Around the country, associations, institutions of higher learning and boating businesses are working to bring
more women into the marine workplace. It can be a daunting task, because jobs in boating traditionally have
been held by men.
“I think historically it’s always been
that way,” says Clark Poston, program
director at Rhode Island’s International
Yacht Restoration School. “The boating
industry has typically been dominated
by males. I don’t know whether it’s attractive to many women.”
IYRS typically has one to three
women in a class of about 32 students.
The program has one female instructor.
At The Landing School, there are five
women this year in a class of 72, and
that has been close to the ratio for the
last few years, Acker says. There are no
female instructors.
Seeking role models
“We feel it’s such a traditionally
white, male-dominated industry, especially the boatyard side, that there are
lots of opportunities out there, and
more women need to be taking advantage of them,” Aker says. “If we’re going to attract
more women, we need to have some women in positions here who are going to be good role models.”
To help market the idea of boatbuilding and design
as a career for women, The Landing School has put
together an advisory committee on the topic.
LuAnn Craft Jarnagin, vice president/operational development for Brunswick Boat Group, is a member of
that committee. The Brunswick vice president says a
higher percentage of women are in white-collar jobs
at her company than in the production ranks.
IYRS
Jarnagin has been with the company for 22 years
and admits, “I probably have not seen progress
[on attracting women to production jobs] as
quickly as we would like.
“I think it’s been pretty stable in the backroom op-
erations, but probably not in the areas of product design, engineering and things of that nature,” Jarnagin
says. “I don’t think it has as much to do with the industry — I think it’s just not as large a pool of applicants to draw from.”
Less interest
Jarnagin and others say it largely goes back to the
fact that fewer women are interested in engineering
and other related math and science majors that could
lead them into the boatbuilding profession. Also, she
adds, women who do work in the industry need to be
shown all their possible career paths.
Florida success
Coladarci, who also serves on The Landing School’s
committee, agrees with Jarnagin that the industry’s
gender gap is largely tied to the lower percentage of
women in the fields of science, math and engineering.
Also, she says, “Careers in the marine industry are
not as showcased as, say, careers in medical, educational or legal fields. When it comes time for students
to work toward a career, they are less likely to select
a career in the marine industry because they might
not have any information on yacht design or boatbuilding, for example.”
That makes the gender gap even greater,
Coladarci says.
But there is some good news on that
front. Female enrollment at the Riviera
Beach Maritime Academy, a public char-
ter high school located near the Intrados
Waterway in Riviera Beach, Fla., is on
the rise. The academy offers the core
curriculum of a traditional high school,
in addition to specialized courses in ma-
rine industry topics. Students can focus
on skills training that can lead to em-
ployment after high school graduation.
What’s attracting the girls? “Probably
the science [such as marine biology] or
drafting components draws them in,”
says acting principal Tonya Hicks-Brown.
“But then we expose them to the hands-
on, and as they tell other girls about the
school, then more girls come.”
This year the school has 106 students
— about 26 percent of them female.
Last year there were 12 to 15 female
students, compared to 28 this year.
“Once they experience getting out
and working with their hands and sand-
ing and the wood craftsmanship part of
it, they like it because they’re actually
doing something and not just sitting in
the classroom,” says Hicks-Brown.
“There are many opportunities to be
entrepreneurial in the marine industry,” she says. “So we make sure we expose our young ladies to all kinds of
opportunities, including job shadowing, networking with women leaders,
and actual job placement in both small
and large marine-related companies.”
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“As leaders in the marine industry, we need to do a
better job at being able to take the women that get here
and move them to other disciplines,” she says. “Then,
they’ll be able to help us recruit in those disciplines.”
Alison Coladarci, a 2005 graduate of The Landing
School who works at Sparkman & Stephens as a yacht
designer, says she’s one of only a couple women in
her department. The ratio, she says, is similar to what
she experienced in her classes at The Landing School.
“In general, I don’t put too much thought into the
male/female ratio in my office,” she says. “It’s obvious
that there are certainly more men in our industry
than women, but I suppose I’m used to it by now. I
never feel uncomfortable given this ratio, and would
not wish to increase the number of females purely to
equalize numbers.”
Career programs
Besides outreach and marketing efforts by the
schools, many groups around the country are hosting
special events designed to introduce young women
to the marine industry.
Recently, the Maine Marine Trades Association
took part in an event called “Women in Trades and
Technology,” in which high school students were
exposed to various careers ranging from firefighting
to marine industry jobs.
At the event, groups of 10 girls each spent an
hour learning about marine electrical skills and
practiced stripping marine wire, crimping on terminal fittings on the wire, and doing heat-shrink tubing over the connections. They were able to test a
DC electrical panel, and they learned about other
