New RNLI Ireland region leader Anna Classon has said she believes there is an awful lot more the organisation can do make it more welcoming for women.
As The Irish Independent reports, Classon and her newly appointed counterpart in RNLI Scotland, Jill Hepburn, are the first women to hold such senior management positions across the charity’s six regions.
Ireland now has the highest number of female volunteers proportionately among its crew, at 12 per cent overall, and there have been a number of role models – including Joan Murphy (now Joan Robertson Edgar), who became first female RNLI crew member on the island of Ireland when she joined the RNLI Red Bay station in Co Antrim in 1972, and Frances Glody, who joined the lifeboat crew member at Dunmore East, Co Waterford, in 1981.
Ireland’s first female coxswain, Denise Lynch, was appointed to Fenit, Co Kerry, while Lisa Forde is a 2nd mechanic in Wicklow, and there are four female lifeboat operation managers at Irish stations.
Classon told the newspaper she doesn’t believe the 12 per cent female volunteer statistic in Ireland is “something to be congratulating ourselves about, because I think there is an awful lot more we can do to make the RNLI more welcoming for women”.
“We have 46 operational stations and 52 lifeboats on the island of Ireland, and only the newer stations are fitted out to accommodate both male and female crew,” she says.
“We need to be more flexible thinking in terms of how we deal with 24/7 availability when there are very able women or men who have young children that they can’t leave at certain times of the day,” she says.
The Irish Independent interview with Classon also profiles four RNLI volunteers – Fin Goggin of Howth station, Galway’s Olivia Byrne, Nadia Blanchfield of Fenit and Síle Scanlon of Ballycotton.
Read more in The Irish Independent here