Abstract
Abstract Data were combined from two studies—qualitative interviews with 19 female cruise-ship workers in a Florida port and 192 quantitative interviews conducted with male and female cruise-ship workers in a European and a Florida port. High rates of partner change were reported in the latter sample: 39 % reported two or more sexual partners in the past year. Logistic regression analysis of 16 different variables showed that gender was the variable most strongly independently associated with a new sexual relationship: women were six times more likely than men to report a new private sexual relationship on their last contract (OR 6.20, 95 % confidence interval 2.01–19.09); 39 % of the female crew reported a new private relationship on their last contract, compared to 16 % of the men. Qualitative data suggest some reasons for this gender imbalance: sexual harassment by male superordinates, the taking of a lover for protection from harassment and the liminal character of shipboard life. Parallels are drawn with other studies depicting risk behaviour as situated actions (i.e. shaped by the material and social circumstances in which the action occurs), and with studies which see women’s greater propensity to risk behaviour in some settings as shaped by power relationships.
Highlights
In the field of occupational health, the shipping industry holds an almost unique position
39 % of our cruise ship crew sample reported two or more sexual partners in the past year— a figure that is more than twice as high as the comparable figure for 18–35-year-olds in the UK NATSAL survey (Wellings et al 1994). These high rates of partner change were roughly comparable between men and women crew members because male crew reported very high rates of commercial sex: 29 % of male crew reported paying for sex in past 2 years, whereas for comparison in the NATSAL 2000 follow-up survey (Johnson et al 2001) just 4.3 % of men reported paying for sex in the past 5 years
It is those data on rates of private sexual partner change that appear to be most important in terms of sexual risk behaviour, and it is the women crew members who have much the highest rates of change
Summary
In the field of occupational health, the shipping industry holds an almost unique position. Between 1980 and 2001, the number of cruise ships in the international fleet increased by 153 % to 372 vessels, the total gross tonnage tripled and the number of passengers per annum grew by 700 % to 12 million (Mather 2003). By 2010 the number of passengers had further grown to an estimated 14.3 million (Cruise Lines International Association 2010). The shipping industry, including the cruise industry, is the traditional industry that more than any other has been transformed by globalising economic forces, creating what is effectively a single global labour market for seafarers (Alderton et al 2004). Wu’s (2005) analysis of the cruise sector labour force showed seafarers of 99 different nationalities. In addition to the international mix, the cruise sector is one of the few industries to employ large numbers of residential female workers: female seafarers are predominantly found in the ‘hotel’ and catering departments. In 2000, 19 % of the cruise labour force were women (Wu 2005)
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