Fitting in

Recently I was telling a friend about the huge number of bras I needed during my time at school. The maritime school I went to was located on an island and required students to live on a campus. This also included for us to hand in our laundry every week, which was cleaned by a wonderful laundry lady. We could pick up or neat piles of clean laundry from the laundry room. Often times, it seemed like my underwear had magically disappeared somewhere in that process.

Call me naive, but it took me a while to realize that my underwear was probably just being stolen. While I shared this story with my friend, I asked him:

“But what did they do with it? Where would they need a bra for?”

He scratched his head for a moment, smiled, and then replied: “My toddler holds a bra from her mother under her pillow, she loves to cuddle and fidget with it. Maybe some students were longing for their mothers while they were at school on the island?”

Considering this peculiar yet plausible possibility, I gender-fluidly replied: “Or maybe someone just wanted to try on and wear my bra?” While we considered more options, we concluded that most likely my stolen bras were not used to support breasts.

What I found interesting about this memory is that I didn't realize at the time:

• that my underwear was being taken by people who had a different kind of intention with it than me.
• how this changed my perspective and behaviour on my presence in the male-dominated group of people I was being in.

This awareness made me pay more attention to my appearance. Even the kind of underwear I wore. No more lace edges or cute prints, from then on I just took the most basic underwear to the campus, and later on to the ships I sailed on.

I realized that through these kinds of actions I started to hide a part of myself.

And in the case of underwear, it's not so bad to do that. But looking back I suddenly wondered if I hadn't secretly hidden many more things of myself in the masculine maritime sector I worked in for 20 years.

Adapting yourself to fit into a group of people brings a certain degree of safety, but in a way it is also very unfortunate and sad. 

Because some individual abilities and characteristics might remain hidden.        

I must honestly say that when I worked for my first maritime employer (on board container ships with a dual maritime officer system) there was a lot of space from me to be completely myself. There was a high degree of psychological safety present on board.

Every individual in the team was seen and heard, there was room for ideas from everyone on board, independent of rank, nationality, age, religion or gender. Leaders were accessible to everyone within the shipboard hierarchy. There was little to no prejudices from or amongst colleagues.

Everyone who was part of the team was seen and celebrated for their individual qualities. And that's great, because when you embrace individuals for who they are, the collective can benefit from the qualities and characteristics they have to share. For example, my slender hands came in handy when finding a small screw in a pump housing, while my colleague's muscles came in handy again when dismantling the top-ring of a dirty HFO separator. Apart from physical skills, there are of course also mental and social qualities that can can be very useful in some situations. This way, not only the individual, but also the team and even the company flourishes.

And that is why I am in favor of creating more inclusiveness and diversity in the maritime sector. Because it doesn't matter what sexual preference, religion, skin color, background, gender or shoesize you have. Especially with a view on the international aspect of shipping, we can make good use of all the different kinds of people that our maritime world is abundant in. And with a view of the wicked environmental, innovation and economic development challenges that awaits our industry in particular.

Because what would happen when we embrace the fact that all people are different? Even when we have a tendency to hide ourselves within a group. And even when you are triggered by the differences you perceive. What if we could see those differences as something positive?

In that case, we might just be ready for the new era that awaits us.

Eva Lianne