We’re Looking for a Few Good Women

‘We’re Looking for a Few Good Women’ Diving schools still struggle to attract women candidates

WE LIKELY NEVER WILL KNOW which came first, the chicken or the egg, but this much is certain: If more women are going to become certified commercial divers, there first have to be more women taking the plunge at diving schools. Instructors at diving schools across North America said they would like to see more women candidates enroll, but at present, few women seem interested.

David H. Weisman, the executive director of the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Commercial Diving Academy, said his school graduates about 260 students per year. In 2008, six women graduated from his school, but that number dipped to just two in 2009. So far this year, one woman has graduated from the 20-week program, and one more began attending the school in the spring. The percentage of women candidates at his school is so low that Weisman termed it “infinitesimal.”

“At our school, it’s definitely not going up,” he said. “At best, it’s 1 to 2 percent. We do everything we can to recruit equally. In fact, we make sure on our Web site that we show women who have been through the program so that we make it clear that it’s available to anyone who’s interested, but we still don’t get that many.”

Some school executives, such as Bill Matthies, who runs the Minnesota Commercial Diver Training Center in Brainerd, are seeing the number of women candidates shrink. His eightweek program draws 38-48 students per year, and over the last few years, not a single woman candidate has enrolled.

Push-ups at the Commercial Diving Academy.

Image courtesy Minnesota School of Diving.

Image courtesy Minnesota School of Diving.

“I think it’s fading,” Matthies said. “I do have one scheduled to come in this year, but I haven’t had a women in our class for the last two years. We started in 1993, and we didn’t have any in the beginning, but around 2000 to 2005, I would say we had three in a short period of time, and then there was a long gap.”

Diving schools across the country report similar numbers. Sergio Smith, the CEO of the North Charleston, S.C.-based International Diving Institute, said the school typically graduates 36 divers per year, but during the school’s five years in business, only five of its students have been women. Similarly, John Paul Johnston of the Seattle-based Divers Institute of Technology, said he had five women

candidates on campus during the spring, but that represented just 5 percent of the student body.

The trend even extends north of the border. Steven White, the course coordinator and dive supervisor at Holland College Commercial Diving in Georgetown, Prince Edward Island, said his school has graduated about a hundred students over the last seven years, and only three were women.

Diving-school executives across the country emphasized that the success rates for women candidates at their schools are no different from those of men, and women are expected to perform every assignment that the men are, bar none. In a traditionally male-dominated industry where women often feel pressure to prove themselves, determined female candidates wouldn’t want it any other way.

“We have not had a single woman fail to complete the program,” Weisman said. “They’ve all been a success. They are required to do every single thing the men do. Our school requires physical training every day, and we allow them to do female-style push-ups instead of male-style pushups, and generally, the girls try to do the male-style push-ups.”

“They do everything,” Smith said. “If they want to attend the program, they have to attend the program the way it’s set up. We can’t deviate or change anything. The only difference is we have a ladies’ locker room and a men’s locker room – that’s it.”

Training at the Commercial Diving Academy.

Matthies said most women candidates expect to be treated the same as men and quickly earn the respect of their fellow students. He said one of his best female candidates was a 95-pound diver who quickly showed that she didn’t need a helping hand.

“She was a little, tiny gal from Washington state, and no way had you better offer to help her,” Matthies said. “She was going to do it, and it didn’t matter what. She did it all, and I was so impressed with her because she had the determination. She was going to do everything the men did, and she did, and they’re all 200 pounds or better.”

Diving-school executives said they would like to have more women candidates attend their schools, though none has put together an advertising campaign targeting women – or any one group, for that matter. Since being a certified commercial diver is a demanding job, the most serious candidates, regardless of gender, take the initiative to find a school, rather than the school finding the students.

“We don’t do any outreach marketing at all,” Weisman said. “If you want to come to our school, you have to know you want to be a diver and find us. Then, once you find our Web site, we try to make it clear that women have gone through the program, are in the program and are welcome in the program.”

One of the reasons diving schools would like to attract more women candidates is because, whether it’s grade-school kickball or saturation diving, it seems that no guy likes being shown up by a girl. Weisman said that when there is a woman candidate in a class, especially one who is determined and in tip-top physical condition, the male students typically feel pressured to work just a bit harder.

“We’ve had some women go through the program that are just superior, spectacular divers,” he said. “They’re fit, and they’re qualified, and when you get a woman like that going through the program, it’s a really good thing for the school. It brings everybody’s level up, so we more than welcome women into the program, and I would like to get more in.”

“The women tend to pay a little bit more attention to detail, and it’s an experience when you have young ladies and men in

Training at the Commercial Diving Academy.

Deidre “Deedee” Ryals, Columbus, MS. Now an LST with Epic, she graduated from the Commercial Diving Academy in 2006. Image courtesy Commercial Diving Academy.

Avrey Wilson, Nassau, Bahamas. Now a medic with Epic, she graduated from the Commercial Diving Academy in 2008.

Tammy Fertig, Woodruff , SC, graduated from the Commercial Diving Academy in 2006. Image courtesy Commercial Diving Academy.

a class,” Smith said. “It’s not really competition, but you can see that the level of knowledge that’s retained by everybody, for some reason, is a lot better.”

Johnston said one of the reasons some diving schools don’t do more to attract women is because it can be harder to place them in jobs after they graduate, partly because some diving companies don’t have new vessels that include separate bathrooms and living areas for men and women.

“A dive school is rated on its ability to place its students, and it’s just a little bit harder to place women,” Johnston said. “The offshore companies, their ships have to be set up to have women crew members because they’re going offshore for several weeks at a time. You have to find a company that’s set up to accomodate women. However, that said, so far, our women graduates have been very successful.”

“The opportunities for women are probably more limited in terms of companies wanting to hire them,” Weisman said. “You have to be able to accommodate a woman offshore, and yes, companies have to legally, but how willing are they to do that? These boats weren’t set up for different genders, and there are a lot of issues. Some companies do all-female dive teams, and that makes a lot of sense.”

Weisman said one of the main reasons so few women attend diving school is the same reason many men aren’t cut out for it: The job requires physical exertion, and it takes a special kind of person, male or female, to work that hard.

“It’s such a difficult physical job that it really doesn’t lend itself to the typical female pursuing it, so there’s less interest,” he said. “It’s very difficult work. You need upper-body strength, and that’s one of the weaknesses that we see when we get women in the program. Some of them are more than capable, but some of them don’t have the upper-body strength that’s really required to get out of the water with a hundred pounds of gear on in a moving sea state and get onto the boat.”

Though physical strength is important, White said smart divers, male or female, can use their brains to make up for a lack of size.

“I haven’t found that you really need to be that strong,” he said. “I work with some really small guys, and they can use the water to their advantage. And in our program, we do a threemile run every morning, and the girls are right there running at the front of the pack and, in fact, showing up a lot of the guys.”

Despite that strong showing, White said women – and men – shouldn’t think it’s easy to live on a boat in tight quarters with a group of guys for weeks on end.

“It takes a tough guy to make it, let alone a woman,” he said. “You really have to have a thick skin in the industry to keep at it, so I think for women, it’s even tougher. I wouldn’t really recommend it, but maybe if you tell somebody that, then they want it even more.”