What's She Doing Here? Women at Work 1918-2018 is a new exhibition in The Little Museum of Dublin which aims to highlight trailblazing women in Ireland.
To celebrate these women, we're sharing Beta Bajgartova's short film about Lisa Levins Burgess, a Navigator at the RNLI Lifeboat Service. Watch it above.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is a charity in the UK and Ireland which saves lives at sea. Founded in 1824, it has saved some 140,000 people, at a cost of more than 600 lives lost in service.
In the early days of the RNLI, lifeboat launch and recovery was often undertaken by women, but it was considered bad luck for women to actually crew the boats. In fact, it wasn't until 1969 that the first female inshore crew member was appointed and 1981 before Frances Glody in Dunmore East became the first woman to crew an all-weather lifeboat.
Today, over 90% of RNLI crew are male. As a child, Lisa Levins Burgess would go to the beach with her parents to watch the rescue teams. She always admired the crew and wanted to join "but there were no girls".
Undaunted, in 1995 she became the first woman to join the crew in Clogherhead and today she is a navigator, the training coordinator for the station, and is training to be coxswain.
"I knew that there were no women on the lifeboat but I didn’t see that as as a big obstacle really, I knew I could do as good a job as the boys," said Lisa.
Watch Beta's short film about felt designer Niki Collier here or watch her short film about 81-year-old rally driver, Rosemary Smith here.
What's She Doing Here? is a timely exhibition that shines a light on historical heroines such as Eileen Gray and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington to women of today who excel in their industries.
Drop in to get a look at some of Beta Bajgartova's portraits from her book, A Woman’s Work as well as Bren Luke's illustrations and Bridget Hourican’s work on the historical context.
What’s She Doing Here? is running now until June 10th, 2018, at The Little Museum of Dublin, 15 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.
