Leah Sweet: Weathering the Gender Bias Storm

December 19, 2024 Roxanne

Imagine working in an environment where you face discrimination constantly: people talk down to you, your abilities are underestimated, and you are overlooked for good opportunities. Yet you love what you do and persist; you look for ways to bring awareness to crippling gender bias; help to develop creative, innovative solutions that will correct centuries-old attitudes and behaviour and support other women with similar frustrations. Against this backdrop describing the sailing industry, we meet Leah Sweet, a professional sailor.

While in the corporate world, women have made inroads in the diversity and inclusion agenda, in the sailing industry there is so much more to be done. In regattas, for example, only 16% of competitors are women. This percentage is an average, sometimes the figure is higher but sometimes it is even lower! While there may be a healthy number of young females involved in junior sailing, there is a high drop-out rate for the sport amongst females vs males as they get older. The women sailors who stay need to work very hard to build confidence and earn respect.

Very early in her career, Leah Sweet took a job on a super yacht with an all-male deck crew tasked with safety and engineering duties. This was so uncommon that there was no uniform for her. She had to wear what was available in men’s size and fit. She also found herself acting and emulating her male colleagues.

“You just have to try and find your femininity and keep it,” Leah laments, adding that even today advertised jobs are indicated as not open to women.

Early experiences like this ultimately led the American-Swiss sailor to help uplift women in the sailing industry.

Born to a sailing family Leah was about six weeks old when her parents moved to the Azores, an archipelagic group of islands off the coast of Portugal. I imagined an idyllic childhood with scenes that inspired many a movie.

“It was an incredible place to grow up, I was surrounded by the ocean and intimately in touch with nature,” recalls Leah who lived in Azores until she was 18.

Her parents owned and worked in a yacht repair shop servicing sailing and motor boats coming through from the Caribbean. Her summers were spent working at the family shop, gradually acquiring skills and learning the ropes that consequently fed her passion for a sailing career.

“When I am out in the ocean, I feel totally liberated. You are removed from the problems of the world and from everyday life. Nothing else matters at that moment. You live in the present and are in touch with nature. There could be shooting stars above you and dolphins swimming next to the boat,” extols Leah, a magna cum laude graduate with a degree in Bachelor of Liberal Arts, English Language and Literature/Letters from a university in the USA.

She studied to be an English teacher but set to sea even before Ishe worked as one. Going back to her roots, Leah worked on tall ships (old “pirate” type ships) with big masts and multiple sails.

“We were once out for 40 days sailing between South America and South Africa on an expedition with paying guests onboard. This is where I learned hard work, developed my work ethic, but I made peanuts! Everyone was there because they loved it, it was an incredible base for me, but I realised I wouldn’t be able to pay off my college debt,” Leah reminisces.

Leah then got a license to work on superyachts for private owners where the pay was much better. The work environment was organised, hierarchical but male-dominated. Typically, females worked as internal crew, doing domestic chores such as cooking and housekeeping. Leah took a job in the all-male deck crew, working on safety and engineering.

“We went to some fantastic places, but you realise that what you are doing is washing a billionaire’s toy! You are not doing anything good for the world,” states Leah.

She then discovered racing. Leah believes that there is much more meaning and a bigger purpose in racing.

The work is performance and technology-oriented, you are constantly learning to use new materials and equipment. The pace of innovation is relentless. You train and prepare to win a race, in a team that brings out the best performance in each member and shares a competitive determination that overcomes barriers and challenges. Moreover, sailing is a rare sport where men and women can compete together and against each other in a theoretically level playing field.

Where the wind blows

I spoke to Leah, who lives in Brittany, France, having moved from Barcelona in March 2024 to start a job as captain of the IMOCA TeamWork - Team SNEF.

The IMOCA is a 60ft sailing yacht governed by the International Monohull Open Class Association. Despite not initially speaking French, she led the team as best she could preparing for Swiss female skipper Justine Mettraux to race in the Vendee Globe. A non-stop, unassisted, single-handed round-the-world race via the three capes, the Vendée Globe is the Holy Grail for solo sailors. It’s reputed to be the greatest sailing competition on earth.

Leah was a newcomer to a team that started training and developing the boat two years prior and had only six months until the start of the race. Her leadership style was different for people who are used to aggressive authoritarian leadership.

“It is probably one of the riskiest things I have done,” reflects Leah, expressing the need to grow from this experience. I have faith that her move to France would pay off in the end, maybe not in the original linear way that was intended but with a future that is just as fulfilling.

“On the worst day at sea, everything on that boat at that moment is your world,” Leah shares. “You are put in life-or-death situations which teach you how to work with your team so closely. There’s no time for gender or race differences, everyone is working together because if we don’t, we can all be in danger.”

Sea of change

Leah has sailed against the current, literally and figuratively. Sailing is a masculine, misogynistic world. This compelled her to advocate strongly for women in sailing.

She is an active member of The Magenta Project, an organisation set up in 2015. It is a sustainable network that initiates programmes to ensure more equity and inclusion for women in sailing. It sponsors and implements projects to push for gender reform.

“In this industry, leaders don’t have leadership training. If any are offered, they are seen as a chore undertaken just to tick the box. Leaders merely emulate how they were treated before,” reflects Leah. So the cycle of authoritarian ways, deep-rooted ignorance and discriminatory language continues.

To counter this, The Magenta Project believes in appointing more female leaders.

“We can achieve more short-term success and the benefits will trickle down,” says Leah. Visible female leaders present an alternative style of leadership and people start to appreciate the difference.

The Magenta Project also advocates mentoring, which Leah signed up for in 2019. After this, she became a shadow board member. From 2022-2024 she held the Mentoring Lead post. About 30-35 mentees are accepted each year out of 80-100 applicants to the mentoring programme.

“It was an incredible experience to improve what we offer, to answer questions, to make new resources available to members. It was hard work, but I learned so much and I have women come up to me when I’m in another part of the world and say ‘I did the programme when you were running it and it was so rewarding.’ That really makes my day.”

While running the mentoring programme, Leah was fortunate to receive a series of training sessions from Women of the World (WOW) coaching. Six women in various leadership roles within The Magenta Project were enrolled together.

“It was a great opportunity to reflect and share stories about the battles and barriers we were trying to fight. We learned different tools that could be applied to our struggles and roadblocks,” she says.

“It’s a broken industry in many ways but as we try and take learning from organisations like WOW and the corporate world, we can benefit. There is no HR in this industry, and we desperately need it,” Leah continues.

Leah hopes to see more diversity in the sailing community.

“But it still has the image of an elitist sport. I’d love to see more sailors from Asia and Africa and more LGBTQ,” wishes Leah.

Leah now leaves the Mentoring Lead position in the capable hands of a mentee-turned-mentor Lena Weisskichel.

“Her freshness and new ideas will allow the programme to flourish,” Leah says generously as she takes on a new role as Foiling Pathway Lead at The Magenta Project.

“Foiling is a watersport that uses hydrofoils to lift a board or boat above water. The boats come out of the water and essentially fly!” Leah explains.

Foiling is an attractive new platform for women. It is a young sport with female mentors doing it for about 20 years, the same as men. It is suited to women as it does not require as much physical strength compared to traditional sailboat boats.

Leah is enthusiastic. “It is a wonderful platform where we can create a good female talent pool.”

The Magenta Foiling Team, has conducted introductory clinics in the UK, Spain, Italy, Australia, and the US. Next year the team will be present in the US, Canada, Scandinavia, Italy, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Dubai to introduce foiling to women. Young women as well as those in their 40s and 50s will learn to “fly” for the first time. They teach one-person boats and later 3-4 working as a team where communication needs to be quick and succinct as everything is happening much faster than on a normal boat.

Leah also develops hands-on training opportunities for women around the world through her role as Team Manager for the Magenta Foiling Team.

Someday, Leah would love to race with the Magenta Foiling All-Women team but finding support is an issue. “We are actively looking for forward-thinking partners and sponsors who share our vision of progress, performance, and equity,” says Leah.

Maintaining a steady course

Leah’s profession demands one to be in tip-top form. She has taken up gravel riding, a specific form of cycling where riders explore unpaved roads and trails. She may enter a competition one day.

She also lifts weights regularly; one needs to understand which muscles to work on that are necessary in sailing. Balance is very important and so is nutrition.

“I am happy to be part of a generation where lifting weights for women is normal, it’s not strange anymore,” says Leah. “When I was growing up, I ran track and field and my legs were very strong, and I was made fun of because I wasn’t petite or lady-like. I took offence. Now with this female generation coming up, being strong is a superpower, something they are proud of, and I love that.”

“It was a big risk to choose this career. In a way, it chose me. You learn as you go, you battle the culture and antiquated system. But I also met my partner here,” and so Leah is grateful.

She shares that her partner, Tony Quinn, also a sailing professional, doesn’t always see the gender discrimination that is so obvious to her. He doesn’t believe that men are more capable on a boat than women. With his own colleagues, he tries to call them out when they use discriminatory language or when they put women down. He is a minority and is Leah’s biggest supporter.

Leah has chosen the vast ocean to be her stomping ground, weathering the gender bias storm, navigating a career marked by headwinds of uncertainty and support that comes in crests and troughs.

“We have a saying in sailing that the worst day on the ocean is still better than the worst day in the office,” Leah shares. Despite blustery developments, there is a steadfast will to make everything work.

Even with still much more to do to weather the gender bias storm, she proclaims, “I think I have come far in my career, been through so many phases of the industry, and learned so much!”

After all, as the American writer and political activist George William Curtis once said, “It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures a prosperous voyage.”

Roxanne | ws