The 48-year-old Diana Sommer has today been trained as a port and terminal worker as the first woman in Denmark.
- I had been unemployed for a week after I had taken the basic course as an electrician, which I had taken with top grades. But I could not find an apprenticeship as a woman and a single mother of four sons at the time, she says about an education that she absolutely does not want to go back to today.
She still clearly remembers how it all began 11 years ago.
- I talked to a friend's husband, who was a port worker, about getting a job as a port worker. Suddenly one morning he called and asked: "What are you doing? You need to put on some safety shoes and work clothes. We're going out and load some wings. I'm lying down and sleeping, what else do you think, it's seven in the morning," Diana Sommer says today.
Diana Sommer quickly got dressed that morning and ended up getting her first job as a dock worker.
- I had to stand and keep an eye on some wings that weren't allowed to hit anything, she says and adds:
- I only had to stand and keep an eye on the wings that weren't allowed to hit anything.
The beginning as a casual worker
After the first job, she ended up showing up for muster, where work is distributed to those present several times a day on a casual worker basis.
- I started to muster, but there were also days when I didn't get any work. But I could still live off it when I supplemented it with unemployment benefits, she says.
In the meantime, she has been employed permanently as a port and terminal worker at Norsea, and the company wants its employees to be trained. Diana Sommer has actually wanted the training for a while, but not all companies are interested in it.
- Now I will get four kroner more in salary per hour, and that only means something to some companies. But that's not how Norsea is, Diana Sommer insists.
Loads and pilots ships
There is no doubt what Diana thinks of her work.
- I really enjoy my job, and I couldn't imagine doing anything else. I load and pilot ships. I drive a forklift, crane, telescopic handler and reachstacker that lifts 20 and 40 foot containers, she says, revealing something she often hears:
- It's mostly the foreign drivers who ask: "Will someone come and help you?"
But Diana Sommer can easily do it herself. She's happy about her new education, but the fact that she's the first woman in Denmark with it on her CV doesn't bother her much.
- It's great to get an education, and I'm a woman, so what, she says.
She can also tell you what it takes to get by in this man's world.
- You have to be able to take men's jargon. Other women need to know that you get scolded, and you need to be a little tough in the felt and be a Man-Hanna, like me, says Diana Sommer, who looks anything but a Man-Hanna in her tight-fitting one-pieces on her day off.
- In private, I don't look like one, she smiles.
She also already knows the future.
- The future is at the Port of Esbjerg - I'm not running anywhere. Now my eldest son, 24, has also become a dock worker, so I have to follow him too, she says.
With her completed education, Diana Sommer is one of only 215 who have been educated since 2012, when the first group of trained dock and terminal workers graduated. And she ended up getting a grade of 12 in her exam.
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