Egypt’s first woman to captain a ship says smear campaign has empowered her

Egypt’s first woman to captain a ship says smear campaign has empowered her

Marwa Elselehdar's name will go down in history. In a matter of weeks, she is expected to become the first woman in Egypt to earn the rank of ship's captain.

Discrimination on account of her gender, she says, began when she was just a cadet in the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport 12 years ago.

The slander snowballed until her name made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

“I was being accused of driving the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal while stationed on a totally different boat,” she told The National.

On March 23, a 400-metre long cargo