I posted this in a GD thread on the subject, but you know ... there are other things one can do with pearls that don't involved clutching.
From the Daily Mail, no less!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2087585/Cruise-ship-Costa-Concordia-sinking-Whatever-happened-women-children-first.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
The Daily Mail, in an editorial of April 17, 1912, claimed that it was The Law of the Sea that: Those who are saved are not the strong and able-bodied but the weak and the dependent not the grasping millionaire from the private suite on the promenade deck, clutching a roll of bank-notes . . . but the defenceless wives and sisters and children.
Yet surprisingly, perhaps, such an attitude provoked sharp responses from early feminists, who believed that women and children first infantilised women, and it gave rise to the slogan Votes not Boats for the female sex. The Mail published several feminist ripostes to its celebration of chivalrous behaviour on the Titanic.
... There were countless cases not so long before the Titanic sank in which soldiers and sailors displayed an utter disregard for the notion of protecting women and children, and there still exists many a seamans first-hand account of such behaviour, ...
After the Pegasus ran aground in 1843 against rocks off the Northumberland coast, one survivor wrote of how the stewardess attempted to get hold of me, but I extricated myself from her in order to save my own life.
Likewise, a survivor from the Northfleet, which sank in the English Channel in 1873, described meeting clusters of women on deck as the ship went down, but said: I did not stop to speak to them for I was looking towards the boats, thinking I might get hold of one of them yet.
... The notion of women and children first reached its apogee in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, for the idea that women are weak and need protecting by males went hand-in-hand with the belief that women should be excluded from positions of responsibility.
The whole article is an interesting read. Just stop before you get to the last three paragraphs.
I wasn't the only person in the GD thread to make the point that the way we do these things, these days, is to make sure there is adequate emergency equipment on board ships. And handle the emergency properly.
Of course, there will always be those who don't, and that seems to have been the case in this case.