Putting women at the heart of seafarers’ success
AMERICAN actor and writer Groucho Marx once said, “Behind every successful man is a woman.”
While the phrase may not be as universally accurate with the steadily changing role of women in the 21st century, the same still holds for seafaring families.
Seafarer wives are expected to hold the fort whenever their men are away for almost a year of shipboard duty. They keep the house, raise the children, manage the finances, look after the elderly and relatives, and provide support and inspiration to their husbands, thus allowing the latter to excel in their careers.
For Arianne Blanche Rocha, chairman of SeaFam International, seafarers’ wives can also be susceptible to mistreatment, especially by relatives.
“When I do workshops, I ask them, ‘What are the expectations set upon you as a seafarer’s wife?’The majority would always say that they are expected to ‘give or lend money.’”
Rocha, through SeaFam International, steadily worked to break such a wheel of abuse.
Seafam International is a nongovernment organization that provides support and social services to seafarers and their families. Rocha established the group to empower seafarers’ wives, regardless of the manning company their husbands work for.
“We have workshops on how to set boundaries. We need to stop the cycle of children having to carry their parents or relatives financially. It’s not to say that we should throw them out when they get old, but we need to at least plan things in a way that when it’s our time to grow old, we do not become a financial burden to our children,” she explained.
“Another SeaFam advocacy is to make seafaring be recognized as a noble profession. Imagine a seafarer who works on a ship enduring all the hardships of physical work and the emotional toll that comes with being away from his family; then our fellow Filipinos will look down on them or, worse, milk them off their hard-earned money.
“On the flip side, it is also wrong to make them believe they’re victims. Victim mentality is dangerous; it gives people a false sense of entitlement. The world does not owe us anything,” she said.
Rocha’s passion for empowering seafarers’ wives is a tribute to her mother, herself a wife of a former seafarer.
“What good is access to knowledge if they are not empowered to use what they have learned? If they cannot assert themselves? I have witnessed the struggles of my mother, of how she was treated. As a child, I could not do anything about it, and I could not understand the things I saw,” Rocha lamented.
It was with this reflection that the woman accepted the challenge of her husband, Miguel Rocha, president and chief executive officer of C.F. Sharp Crew Management Inc., one of the biggest and most renowned manning agencies in the country.
The challenge was to make the family center of C.F. Sharp more proactive by starting an association of seafarers’ wives and organizing activities to encourage better financial planning.
“Now, the more seafarers’ wives I meet, the more I strive to do better. I want them to recognize their worth, to grow as human beings, to feel loved, and most importantly, to love themselves. We tend to forget who we are and what we are capable of as we face so many challenges in life,” she said.
The woman behind the success
She is known simply as “Arianne” by people in the maritime industry. Well-loved and admired by many, the young woman would be hard to miss even in a roomful of crowd.
Her strides are sure; she brims with positive energy, and whenever she smiles, it’s as if her entire countenance smiles as well.
Rocha was practically raised in the Philippine maritime industry. She was exposed to the realities of the sector. She grew up listening to the complaints and problems of seafarers and how the corruption of those in power affected the Filipino mariners.
Her active role in the industry started when she became the managing editor of a known maritime magazine.
“I was nervous at first, but then, the more you listen to people, you start to recognize who really cares, who understands the issues, and who is just spitting crap. I think that was the first time that I saw maritime figures at a professional level. Before, it would be in parties or other personal setting,” she recalled.
Outside her role as chairman of SeaFam International, Rocha spends her time reading books, playing strategy games and honing her craft. It is with the latter that she receives further accolades as she was ranked sixth and the only woman member of the Camera Club of the Philippines, the oldest camera club in the country since 1929.
“I am a firm believer in balance. A woman who’s given opportunities because of her gender is equally discriminated against as a woman who’s not given opportunities because of her gender. For me, feminism is never about being the superior gender; it’s about being recognized as an equal,” she said.
Rocha also loves to spend time with her family and children. “My eldest is moving abroad this year, so lately, we’ve been exploring different restaurants and cafes on her days off from work to keep our love bank full before she leaves.”