72% of Sea Ranger candidates young women
For a couple of years we have noticed a trend in our applicants for our Sea Ranger Bootcamp. Surprisingly, an overwhelming majority of applicants have been female. We decided to examine this trend in more detail and have discovered that since our Bootcamp has been running, 72% of people who signed up have been female.
While the Sea Ranger Service actively recruits women for the selection of Sea Rangers, to ensure diversity in our ships’ crew, this discovery comes as welcome news especially when looking at the wider maritime industry. In his recent piece for The Economist, our Founder and CEO Wietse van der Werf examines the gender gap in the maritime industry, citing research that shows only 1% of seafarers in the maritime industry are female.
Keeping that figure in mind; that out of all the people working at sea across the world only 1% of them are female, our high level of female applicants is a welcome result and we hope it continues for our future Bootcamps.
Furthermore this news showcases the ability of the Sea Ranger Service to effectively extend this diversity within the broader maritime sector. Sea Rangers gain transferable skills and qualifications whilst with the Sea Ranger Service, meaning they can continue to work in the maritime industry after leaving our organisation.
Why do people join our Sea Ranger Bootcamp?
A lot of people join our Bootcamp because they want to become one of our Sea rangers, but some people sign up just to challenge themselves and learn new skills. Speaking of her reason to join the Bootcamp, one of our current Sea Rangers Nina Hubers had this to say;
“Before applying to the Bootcamp and working as a Sea Ranger I worked as a lifeguard for the KNRM on Terschelling, so I was already working with people and with the sea. I was drawn to apply to the Sea Ranger Bootcamp because it would continue my work with the sea, provide me with a new challenge and an opportunity to learn a lot of new skills.”
Join the next Sea Ranger Bootcamp
Our Sea Ranger Bootcamps are run annually, if you would like to be informed when the next one will be taking place, please sign up to our dedicated mailing list.