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Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

bbc.com

31–40 of 169 posts

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If lack of female ship captains is a sign that women are far behind, is lack of male school teachers, nurses, and HR professionals a sign that men are far behind?

No, because a cargo ship captain typically makes between $150k-$200k a year.

Deep sea welders make significantly more than that, but are at a massively increased risk of injury or death. Should women be thrust into these roles?

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#33
post #7
post #4

That's pretty bad, but who was the real captain? It's the first time I see total silence about the crew in official sources. At least it is mentioned in some reputable sources (e.g. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/04/01/suez-can... ) that the crew was Indian, but still not a single name.

as i understand it, while ships go through the canal, they are accompanied by a local guide who i believe takes over control of the ship. so even if this was human error, it's not likely that the actual captain was responsible. but i can also imagine that a guide, while familiar with the local conditions was less familiar with the ship itself, a ship that large, which has a different response time than smaller ships.…

while pilots take over it's under supervision of the captain, the captain still bares responsibility.

The ship size is also common for the canal, pilots are trained especially to be able to route such big ships through the canal.

But it still likely a chain of bad coincidences which you can't really blame on anyone. Including a unusual strong sandstorm and an engine failure as far as I can tell.

It literally might have been sand storm => engine failure due to sandstorm (air intake getting clogged up or similar) => wind moves ship onto shore without anyone being able to do anything against it. Not I said it might. It needs a proper investigation as far as I can tell.

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because a cargo ship captain typically makes between $150k-$200k a year.

Deep sea welders make significantly more than that, but are at a massively increased risk of injury or death. Should women be thrust into these roles?

Of course not. No one should be ‘thrust’ into any roles, but if women want to do them they should have equal opportunity.

And clearly there is some issue of implicit bias, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place.

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#36
post #26

I agree, and we should be encouraging women into men-dominated fields across the board, starting with the ultra dangerous jobs like "deep sea welder" and "lumberjack". We shouldn't stop until women are subjected to the same risk of death on jobs as men are. [1] [1] https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/how-to-die-at-work-be-male-20...

Do you find your current discussion tactics result in anything other than an argument with those you are talking to?

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#37
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as i understand it, while ships go through the canal, they are accompanied by a local guide who i believe takes over control of the ship. so even if this was human error, it's not likely that the actual captain was responsible. but i can also imagine that a guide, while familiar with the local conditions was less familiar with the ship itself, a ship that large, which has a different response time than smaller ships.…

The ship had a blackout, so not sure what could be done to avoid grounding it. Ultimately the captain is responsible for the technical state of the ship.

The allegations that the Ever Given lost power have been denied by Evergreen.

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, is just a "fun" joke that ties into stereotypes. "Haha, told you women couldn't drive, look at this one stopping global trade" and then it spirals out of control. Not sure we can or should read too much into it.

it would be funny if it wasn't sad that women are so far behind that a woman ship captain is news.

I don't understand the 'behind' bit. What's 'behind' about not being a cargo ship captain?

Do you have to force people into roles they don't want just to create a statistic to suggest equality?

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#39
post #3

Well, that was probably predictable. If the news coverage of her being the "first female ship's captain" happened near the same time as the Suez Canal incident, those two stories can easily be conflated into a "told you so" narrative to justify condescension towards women aspiring to be ship's captains. It doesn't matter whether the correlation is real because the narrative feeds into existing stereotypes and anyone…

Or, is just a "fun" joke that ties into stereotypes. "Haha, told you women couldn't drive, look at this one stopping global trade" and then it spirals out of control. Not sure we can or should read too much into it.

HN is a place for data: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/27/1/71.abstract

Men pose higher per-km risk to others than women for all modes except buses, as well as being over-represented among users of the most dangerous vehicles.

(From abstract)

Re: Marwa Elselehdar: 'I was blamed for blocking the Suez Canal'

#40

This happened because this time[0] the Media - strangely - kept the responsibles anonymous. This feeds conspiracy theories. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Schettino

Cruise ships tend to have the name of the captain widely promoted, so it's trivially findable public information. The same is not true for random freighters. And Schettinos name was widely broadcast because there were clear points to criticize his and the crews specific behavior (which we do not have here), which lead to death of a bunch of people (which we do not have here). It's a really odd point of comparison - there's plenty of nautical accidents where this isn't widely reported because it's not especially interesting and there aren't immediate reports of the captains misbehavior to report on.
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