Oral History Gallery

Extract Text (Duration1.29)

It's probably become more of an awareness for me as I got more senior and when I first went to sea in '94, the initial headlines of women going to sea was over and it was just the bedding in process. Although even now still at any cocktail party or social event in the Navy, the first question you're still asked is, "Oh what's it like to be a women at sea?" You know it's still seen as a novelty from some people who aren't in the services. But it's not novelty by any stretch anymore, but it was still quite nice because I was the first female Marine Engineering Officer of a frigate or destroyer, of a big ship as we call them not the small ship classes. So yeah I made it as the first to get though and to be the first female frigate Marine Engineering Officer, which was quite nice but still exposes the parlous state, if you like, and how difficult it is to keep women in the Navy through in to their 30s and in to the more senior stages of their career, because it is still so difficult to juggle the family aspects of it with a life in the forces. So on top of that as well, the engineering side of it, which is still not recruiting enough women. So yeah, you're still very much in the minority.