Venice gets first woman gondolier

THE all-male bastion of the world famous Venetian gondolier has been broken.

Ms Alexandra Hai, 35, has won a 10-year battle to become the first woman gondolier, according to the Sunday Times of London.

The struggle pitted her against one of the world's most exclusive all-male cliques - the 405-member Venice Gondola Association.

The paper said the administrative tribunal for the Veneto region had now recognised her right to navigate her gondola for customers of the three one-star hotels where she works.

Ms Hai, the daughter of an Algerian father and German mother who grew up in Germany and moved to Venice in 1996, had originally planned to become a film-maker.

But she changed her mind three days after arriving in Venice in 1996, following her first trip aboard a gondola.

Three years later, after coaching by friendly gondoliers, she took her first test to obtain a licence.

She failed, officially because of a botched manoeuvre, but won an appeal on the grounds that there were no women in the examining commission.

In two later attempts, with two women on the commission, Ms Hai bumped into another gondola in choppy waters, then failed to keep her craft steady when she met a motorboat coming the other way.

But after the court win, she is now hoping for smoother waters, said the newspaper.