Women In Sailing

Yachting is still often perceived as a man’s world - despite important steps forward in recent years. Professional sailor, HANNAH DIAMOND gives her view on gender equality in our sport.

- Hannah Diamond

The past year has brought a number of prominent breakthroughs in women’s sailing – not least the introduction of a quota system in the Volvo Ocean Race, which will favour yachts that go for a mixed crew. My hope is that this is the start of a trend that will pick up momentum and see our sport continuing to make fundamental changes to increase opportunities based on talent rather than gender.

It is a discussion that has frequently come up over the years and has been a particularly hot topic throughout the sport more recently. Hopefully all these conversations will lead to some changes being made in the way we view gender in sailing.

It has been an interesting year for me; transitioning from Olympic classes where the options for classes that you can choose are determined by gender, to keelboats where crews are openly selected and I have mostly been the only female on board or part of an all-female team.

Of course, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) mandate an even gender split, so the Olympics is not representative of the rest of the sport and it would be incorrect to say every boat should have a 50/50 gender split. Yet female sailors with the experience and technical level equivalent to that of a male should have the same opportunity to race. I feel very strongly that no one should have a position on a crew apart from by merit but I believe that the reason that there are currently not more female professional sailors is more a factor of lack of opportunity than ability.