The Offensive Pants

Working as a broadcast technician on cruise ships takes extensive technical savvy. You need to know satellites and tracking systems, automation programming and video production, among other things. Getting a job like that was exciting and gave me a real sense of accomplishment in general. I didn't feel I'd accomplished anything great as a woman until I saw the pride of it in another woman.

The other woman was from Africa and she held a position of distinction herself managing the spas on board ships. We first met when she was joining a ship I was working on. I bumped into her on a skinny, uneven gangway that was erected for crew use. She was a slight thing, all alone, trying to haul six months worth of baggage across the rough gangplank. As I helped her carry everything on board, she asked what I did and when I told her, her whole face lit up. She was so excited to meet a woman who ran a technical department; a woman in a position of influence and one who would have authority over men. It was a first for her and from then on whenever I made a trip up to the spa, she made sure the other girls there knew who I was and what I did, as if to say, "look at what she's done, you could do that too."

After working on ships for a few years, I eventually encountered one other woman working in my position on a different ship. Though we were still a rarity, I almost never ran into any problems as a woman working in what had traditionally been a man's job-almost. The one time being a woman had created a major issue was on my very first contact.

For all female employees proper attire was a skirt. Day or night, woman had to wear a skirt and on a few occasions shorts. The company had already made one exception in one position where a skirt wasn't practical, but since there hadn't been any woman in the position I worked, it was still company policy that I wear a skirt at all times.

My work sometimes required me to lift heavy equipment and crawl into tight spaces, so I had the tailor make me pants in the addition to my skirts. Then I promptly shoved the skirts in the back of my little closet. Everything went swimmingly until I caught the attention of the department head and was promptly called into his office and confronted.

As with most work environments there is a hierarchy on ships, moreover the isolation and navel associations make the hierarchy on board perhaps a little more pronounced. The stripes on an officer's sleeve tend to put people on their toes and I had been called in to see an officer with a significant number of stripes. From the moment I walked in, I was assaulted with a barrage of questions. Where was my skirt? Why was I never in my proper uniform? Didn't I like my work on ships? Did I have no respect?

I was flabbergasted. I couldn't effectively do my job in a skirt. I wore the same uniform the men in my position wore. I loved my work on ships, but it didn't matter how I tried to explain myself. Nothing I said could justify the offensive pants I wore. When I informed my supervisor of the warning I had received he was appalled, but even our petitions to the company fell on deaf ears. The policy was apparently too much trouble to change. I was advised to lay low and wait for a new department head. Luckily the officer who was so infuriated by my improper uniform soon left and was replaced by someone more understanding. I eventually left that company for another company where all the technicians wore only pants.