Svetlana Timm-Vengerov was just 17 years old when she went to sea for the first time.
Her journey began with a flight from Germany to South Korea, where she headed for the harbour city of Busan and boarded a ship.
"Of course, it was a really impressive feeling and experience at first, because you couldn't really know what to expect," she says looking back, now 30 years old.
Timm-Vengerov travelled across the Pacific to North and Central America and then back to Asia, in a six week journey - the whole of her school holidays.
It was part of a holiday cruise programme created by the German Shipowners' Association (VDR). She was encouraged by her godfather, the only member of her family who had any contact to seafaring.
The maritime world has long been a male-dominated realm, but a growing number of studies, networks, events and programmes is trying to encourage women to join the industry.
That is working out for some, such as Timm-Vengerov, who has moved on in the world of shipping from peeking over crewmembers' shoulders.
She became second technical officer at Hamburg-based container shipping giant Hapag Lloyd in 2021, a job that involves monitoring technical processes and fixing faults, coordinating maintenance and repair work as well as the mechanical engineering staff.
"I'm a manager," she says - which makes her part of a minority of women in leadership positions.
There are even fewer women among senior management of maritime companies than the proportion of women seafarers overall.
Women represented only 1.2% of the global seafarer workforce, according to the BIMCO/ICS 2021 Seafarer Workforce Report, says the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
In Germany, 3.8% of the 3,300 or so captains, officers and comparable employees were women in September 2023, according to figures from social insurance agency Knappschaft-Bahn-See.
Female seafarers accounted for 6.7% of all 7,900 merchant shipping and deep-sea fishing employees subject to pension insurance contributions in Germany, meaning the proportion of women is well above the international figure of around 2%, says Gaby Bornheim, the first woman to head the VDR shipowners' association.
Both the IMO and the association are working to significantly increase this proportion.
"Within this historically male-dominated industry, IMO has been making a concerted effort to help the industry move forward and support women to achieve a representation that is in keeping with twenty-first century expectations," says the UN agency.
"We simply cannot afford to do without half of humanity, especially in view of the shortage of skilled labour," says Bornheim.
Technical officer Timm-Vengerov is usually the only woman when she is at sea with around two dozen crew members. One time, there were two other women working on the same ship, she recalls. "It was called a women's steamer."
"You don't know any different and I get on well with it," she says about working almost exclusively with men.
But why is seafaring still such a male-dominated industry? What obstacles are there for women? And what has already changed?
"It's not an easy profession and people used to say that women don't have the physical strength for it," says Franziska Eckhoff, German Chairwoman of the Women's International Shipping & Trading Association (WISTA).
But that has changed. "Whereas men used to carry every piece of cargo over in a sack on their shoulder, today we have cranes, containers, and so on." Ships have become more technically innovative and physical labour plays less of a role. That makes achieving equality - "in theory" - easier, she says.
Many agree with Eckhoff. "Hard work, harsh tone" - prejudices often prevail with regard to the maritime working environment, says VDR boss Bornheim. "However, thanks to modern technology, the work is no longer as physically demanding as it used to be and the interaction on board is shaped by a strong team spirit."
But technology cannot fix the fact that seafarers are often away for several months at a time - as Timm-Vengerov knows all too well. She has spent Christmas at sea for the past five years, and looks back on a shared meal and a Christmas tree on board.
"Balancing family with a career is still an issue," says Eckhoff. But there are also areas of seafaring that are easy to combine with family life because they are more or less like day trips or a week's journey - such as ferries that return in the morning and evening.
"I'm also a fan of the idea that more women could become tugboat captains."
She recalls a comment made by a female captain in the liner shipping industry, who said, "This is the best work-life balance I've ever had. I'm at work for four months and that's my job. Then I come home and I'm 100% at home."
She has also heard of the occasional model where you can take your partner or child on board with you, says Eckhoff.
A further concern is the harassment of women in the shipping industry. The WISTA network and others carried out a survey of more than 1,000 female seafarers from 78 countries. Two thirds of respondents said that they had witnessed male colleagues harassing and intimidating female colleagues; a quarter stated that physical and sexual harassment occurs on board.
But Bornheim says discrimination and harassment of women are "not specific to the shipping industry, but a social phenomenon." However, she sees a particular challenge in maritime shipping, pointing to the workplace being the place of residence for some time and a "certain spatial confinement" on board.
International bodies are focusing more on the issue of bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment. In February 2024, the IMO and International Labour Organization (ILO) plan to hold their first meeting to jointly develop strategies on how to deal with this issue.
Last year, the IMO proclaimed International Women in Maritime Shipping Day on May 18, a world first. "One positive development is clearly that the IMO has the advancement of women in the maritime industry relatively high up on its agenda," says Eckhoff. It is no longer something people can ignore.
The Managing Director of the Maritime Vocational Training Centre, Sabine Zeller, welcomes the fact that women in the maritime industry are beginning to show themselves more on this day, for example. "We need these lighthouses," she says.
She is concerned about the lack of "visibility of maritime shipping as a professional field in general and of women in these professions in particular." Unfortunately, women on board are still largely perceived as a rarity. She wants to work towards "making it normal at some point."
For Timm-Vengerov, who studied marine engineering before going on to work on board large container ships, this is very much a feature of everyday life. "I would encourage any woman with an interest to give it a go," she says of maritime work. After all, if it does not work out, "you can always go ashore," she says with a laugh.
