International Women’s Day is an important annual event that celebrates all the amazing things women have achieved. It is a way to show how women have and continue to influence the world. As well as celebrating brilliant women that have made changes and achieved what they wanted to, it’s also used as a day to highlight and raise awareness about issues that women still face today.

Historically, women have been denied the right to vote, to work, and lots of other things, including taking important positions in companies and pioneering to forward the travel industry! Whether it was travelling unaccompanied, flying a plane, or going into space, ambitious women throughout history were told “no” time and time again. Thankfully this has and is changing all the time.

In the 1700’s Jeanne Baret was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe - but she had to disguise herself as a man! She joined the first French world expedition from 1766 to 1769. She worked as assistant on the boat in disguise, as women were not allowed on board French naval vessels at that time.

We now have female captains of cruise ships, however not many. Celebrity Cruises said around 2% of the worlds mariners are women. Kate McCue is currently their master of Celebrity Cruises’ ship Equinox, she made her name in the industry in 2015 as the first American woman to captain a cruise ship!

Sarah Breton was welcomed in 2010 as the first ever female captain in P&O Cruises 173 year history and is the only woman to hold this position on any UK cruise ship. In 2019 Disney decided to address this and used Minnie Mouse to promote their Disney Cruiseline and gave Minnie her stripes - hoping that it would inspire the next generation of female leaders in maritime!

Professional female aeroplane pilots still only constitute a steady 5% of the pilot workforce, which has stayed at this level for the last 4 decades.

One female pilot, Maria Pettersson, said this is important to her to show other females that this is something that can be done now, she said “breaking a stereotype is important to show other people they can do it. To go outside of the scope of what’s classed as ‘normal’, to show other possibilities to young girls.”

Read here the inspiring interview that Elle Magazine published about these 3 female pilots! Inspiring female pilots