Captain Nancy Jaramillo proud in front of her ship 'Erin Bruce' from Wanchese

The first captain of a fishing vessel drives the fight for equality for women at sea

ARGENTINA
Wednesday, October 09, 2019, 05:00 (GMT + 9)

Nancy Jaramillo became in 2017 the first woman in the country with the title of "Fishing Captain", and from that place she became one of the most authoritative voices to claim for gender equality at sea.

With more than two decades on board fishing boats, Nancy Jaramillo became in 2017 the first woman in the country with the title of "Fishing Captain", and from that place she became one of the most authorized voices to claim from Mar del Silver for "equal conditions for sea workers".

Fishing vessel Erin Bruce, owned by Wanchese Argentina S.R.L.

Jaramillo is currently captain of the Erin Bruce, a vessel of 54 meters in length and 12 of beam that belongs to the Canadian company Wanchese, and in dialogue with Télam said that he eventually warned that his journey - "to clean bathrooms to the main chair on the bridge "- could serve" to open the way ".

That is why in recent months he decided to join the Multisectorial de la Marplatense Woman to put his face and his story "as a testimony for the girls who come back."

Photo: Courtesy Diego Izquierdo / El Marplatense

"I have been in this for 24 years, and although it has changed a lot, it is still a totally closed world. In a fishing plant there are as many men as women. Why in the sea can we not achieve the same? I was a rarity when I went up to a ship like a pigeon, and now I'm weird for being the only captain, " she said.

Her history as a woman of the sea began in 1994 in Puerto Madryn, due to a mixture of "chance, poverty and need," as she recalled, from the dining room of Erin Bruce, moored at the North Pier of Mar del Plata.

Born in a humble home in Trelew and raised in a poor neighborhood in Puerto Madryn, life surprised her with a son at 17 and, as a single mother, she had to go out to find a way to guarantee a future for both of them. He tried to enter an armed force, only to know that he would have a salary every month. They rejected her in the police and the Navy for having a child. In the Naval Prefecture they laughed in the face. “They told me:‘ There are no women and there won't be, ”he says, and now she is the one who laughs. "I imagine that poor man now," he concluded.

Source: TELAM

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