A female Turkish ship captain is challenging long-standing assumptions about women’s suitability for life at sea, arguing that the profession is far more accessible to women than industry stereotypes suggest.
Captain İşiaçık, one of a small but growing number of Turkish women holding a master mariner’s license, spoke in a recent interview about her experience working aboard commercial vessels. She dismissed the notion that shipboard life presents insurmountable physical or social barriers for women, saying the day-to-day realities of the job are manageable once female seafarers gain experience and confidence.
According to the captain, the biggest obstacles facing women in maritime careers are not operational but cultural — persistent skepticism from within the industry itself, rather than the practical demands of sailing, cargo operations, or extended time away from shore.
Turkey’s maritime sector, which includes a substantial shipbuilding and ship-repair base along the Marmara coast as well as a sizeable merchant fleet, has seen a gradual increase in the number of women enrolling in maritime academies over the past decade. However, women still represent a small minority of licensed deck and engine officers nationwide, mirroring a global pattern in which female seafarers account for roughly two percent of the world’s maritime workforce, according to industry estimates.
Captain İşiaçık’s comments arrive at a moment when shipowners, crewing agencies, and maritime training institutions across Turkey and abroad are under increasing pressure to diversify their workforce amid a well-documented global shortage of qualified officers. Industry bodies including the International Maritime Organization have pushed initiatives aimed at encouraging greater female participation in seafaring roles, citing both workforce shortages and broader equity goals.
For Turkish maritime training institutes and crewing companies, testimonials from serving female officers such as İşiaçık serve a practical purpose: they offer a counter-narrative to families and young women who may be discouraged from pursuing maritime careers due to misconceptions about safety, living conditions, or acceptance among predominantly male crews.
Why it matters: With shipowners worldwide facing a persistent shortage of certified officers, visible role models like Captain İşiaçık could help Turkish maritime academies attract a broader talent pool. As international shipowners and manning agencies increasingly source crew from Turkey, a more gender-diverse officer pipeline may become a genuine competitive advantage for the country’s crewing sector.
Source: 7Deniz, 2021-02-24T19:53:00 — https://www.7deniz.net/video/kaptan-isiacik-kadinlarin-gemide-calismasi-zor-degil