Two women from the Indian Navy show no ocean is too vast if you are determined to achieve something
Using their own examples these women from the Indian Navy show why women need to explore economic opportunities in new sectors and fields, including the forces.
The Indian economy is losing out because of the dismal rate of female labour participation. A YourStory report discovered that with cultural norms, unpaid household work, and multiple issues at the workplace including safety and transport are keeping women away from work. And women breaking into fields or sectors that have been male-dominated has been a major challenge.
Take, for example, NASA cancelling the first ever all-female spacewalk due to lack of a spacesuit.This is revealing of how lacking workspaces are when it comes to the needs of women.
While the labour force dips, on the bright side more and more women are looking at fields that never had room for them before.
HerStory caught up with two women from the Indian Navy who spoke about their own careers in the Navy, and how they took one of the biggest challenges of their careers: circumnavigating the globe in a 254-day all-women voyage on Tarini, the Indian Navy’s sailing vessel.
The Tarini crew, as they are called, included Lieutenant Commander Vartika Joshi (skipper), crewmembers including Lt Commander Pratibha Jamwal, Lt Commander Aishwarya Boddapati, Lt Commander P Swathi, Lt Commander S Vijaya Devi, and Lieutenant Payal Gupta.
The six member crew
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Their expedition was known as the Navika Sagar Parikrama, where they sailed across four continents, touched five countries, and crossed the equator twice.
Setting out on September 10, 2017 from and completing more than 21,600 nautical miles, the voyage wrapped up with the crew returning home on May 21, 2018.
Lieutenant Commander Pratibha Jamwal from Kullu joined the Indian Navy as an air traffic controller in 2011, while Lieutenant B Aishwarya from Hyderabad joined the Indian Navy in the Architecture Cadre. Both the women share their journey about joining the Indian Navy, travelling together, working in a team, and why more and more women should look to build a career in the Indian Navy.
Here is the video:
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