Empowering women in maritime: Why are we still having this conversation?

In 2019, the International Maritime Organization selected Empowering Women in the Maritime Community as its World Maritime Day theme, putting a greater focus on the importance of gender equality in the maritime sector in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Women represent only two percent of the world’s 1.2 million seafarers and 94 percent of female seafarers are working in the cruise industry, according to the data from the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The IMO has been working on gender balance since 1988 and has helped open doors for female training and employment through its capacity building initiatives and programs.

Women have made massive strides over the past 30 years, claiming senior roles both onboard ships and in executive boards.

However, promoting diversity for diversity’s sake has often been a problem in the industry as many women attest from experience.

“Gender equality is not a numbers’ game. It is not a matter of the number of women, but rather a question of women having real power and influence on their role in the society and their working conditions,” Cecilia Österman, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Maritime Science, Linnaeus University, said in a webinar on women in maritime recently hosted by Capital Link.

Österman started her career in the sector around 30 years ago as an engine apprentice, when women engineers on board were a rare sight. Even though she agrees that monumental progress has been made since then, often women have been used as a prop to display diversity for diversity’s sake.

The webinar gathered several female industry leaders, with impressive careers, to discuss the topic and address potential solutions to move the issue forward.

However, while addressing the panel Österman posed a very interesting question:

Why are these impressive, senior women still having this conversation in the 21st century? Is it really still necessary to discuss women’s worth and what they bring to the table?

The simple answer is yes!

One of the key arguments for this is that women still lack visibility in the sector.

To echo the words of Cleopatra Doumbia-Henry, President of the World Maritime University (WMU) from an interview our publication conducted with her last year, the industry is not doing enough to empower women, as the representation of women in figures has not changed that much over the last 15 years.

We spoke with Mrs. Henry in November 2019, almost at the end of the year dedicated to the topic of women, and it was then that she commented that there were “only two months left until the issue will no longer be spoken about too much. “

This content is available after accepting the cookies.

Change cookie-settings View on Youtube.

In order to answer the question of why we still need to talk about empowering women in maritime, we must look at the state of things.

The conversation boils down to equal opportunity, equal treatment, and equal recognition, or basically lack thereof.

For one, even those women who have become CEOs of major shipping companies, captains, and senior engineers agree that there is a long way to go for women to attain equality.

While doing some research for the article, I came across a blog that really impressed me, and at the same time saddened me by some of its content.

The blog, entitled Against the Tide was founded by Elizabeth W. Marami, born and raised in Kenya. She is a second officer at Celebrity Cruises.

The blog provides a platform for female seafarers to share their stories about their careers at sea.

Having read several stories, the key impression is that not all women felt discriminated against on the job, but the majority of them still did. Gender biases and prejudice made them feel that they had to work much harder than men to prove their skills, knowledge, and expertise to be regarded as a valuable member of the team.

Unfortunately, women at sea still face hostile environments, being predominantly faced with a male-dominated crew who don’t think women are capable of working onboard ships, carrying out physically demanding tasks.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEURevyAqox/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Some old nautical superstitions held that women on board ships meant bad luck.

It appears that this stigma for women persists, especially in less-developed countries.

The issues women face on board ships range from pragmatic ones like lack of basic female sanitary products and disposable bins, to inadequate (no) female changing rooms, uniforms and protective gear too big for female bodies to those with greater consequence such as nasty jokes, comments or even sexual harassment on board.

One of the major takeaways is that women are still judged by the way they look, and often their capabilities to carry out a certain job are undermined.

Stories where women engineers were confused for cooks or had to act ‘butch’ to appeal to their male crews abound. Wearing makeup on board is often frowned upon or even misinterpreted as an invitation for sexual advances, hence many women refrain from it, trying not to attract too much attention to themselves.

Eventually, women who stood their ground and stayed in the profession had to endure numerous challenges and pressures. But, many of them point out that their hard work, knowledge, and skills are what earned respect from their male colleagues.

What is more, these tribulations have not broken their spirits, on the contrary, the majority of them remain passionate about their work and life at sea regardless of the sacrifices they had to make.

If women can make it in the sector, why all the fuss?

Indeed, women have proven to be resilient and have managed to secure professional advancement in the sector despite all the odds.

Nevertheless, persevering against all odds should not be the prerequisite.

Therefore, to ensure more women opt for a career at sea they need an environment where they can feel safe and welcome, and not feel constrained based on their gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation for that matter.

It is not about allowing women into some sort of a ‘boys club’ just for the sake of it, but enabling women who are good at their jobs to move up the ladder and have the same power and say (pay) as men.

What women want are decent working conditions.

A safe and welcoming environment can only be created by raising awareness about the issues women in the maritime face, and creating an environment where they feel safe to report incidents so they can get protection.

Education of both male and female trainees about these issues and teaching them how to handle them is another important aspect of the process.

Educating the management on how to investigate potential incidents on board and/or shoreside operations is another important issue that needs to be addressed.

Having said that, the maritime industry is renowned for its well-established male-dominated networks, which can often be unwelcoming and intimidating to women. These networks are at the core of industry partnerships and coalitions that move the industry forward.

This is one of the reasons women sometimes fear to report certain incidents as they are concerned they won’t be taken seriously, or even worse, would be characterized as ‘the whistle-blowers’, which eventually might turn away employers from hiring women.

Finally, due to all of these reasons, a lot of women have been faced with challenges in moving up the ranks, as male colleagues were preferred for the job, often even when they were less experienced and less qualified.

A career at sea is losing on its appeal, especially having in mind the ongoing crew change crisis where seafarers have been left for months on board ships, without the ability to sign-off.

Long periods at sea, especially in circumstances like global pandemics, have a detrimental impact on the wellbeing and mental health of seafarers.

Seafarer suicide rates have spiked due to the inability to repatriate and return home.

To move forward the industry needs to take a long and hard look at these issues and find a way to rectify them to empower women.

There is no one-solution-fits-all, but there are several areas that need to be addressed.

First and foremost the sector needs to build up awareness about the maritime profession and all the possibilities and opportunities for the employment of women.

“We need to create a sustained awareness, especially in the minds of the young people that maritime, is an attractive sector to be in, that there is career progression and that there are different professions in maritime,” Caroline Young, CEO, Hong Lam Marine Pte Ltd; President, Singapore Shipping Association said during the Capital Link webinar.

“We need to increase the visibility of maritime and no better time than now with all the social media tools at our disposal.”

Having that in mind, the sector has hit a point where it will have to transform in order to attract young talent and tap from the other half of the population.

Therefore, key decent work conditions and better work and life balance will have to be at the top of the sector’s agenda moving forward.

Furthermore, the IMO needs to advocate for better maternity policies for women so they can continue working after having a baby and not be afraid of losing a job if pregnant.

Moving up the ranks is another issue that women feel are being constantly denied regardless of their capabilities, hence facilitating advancement and professional training and improvement should also be a priority.

Young believes women need to learn from the men and their sustained networking ability, and be there in the right place at the right time to get noticed.

She added that women need to be increasingly supportive of their fellow women and open doors for them when the opportunity arises, especially senior women in the maritime sector.

Speaking during the webinar Lois K. Zabrocky, CEO of International seaways, said the company had a lot of women move up in the ranks within the company over the recent period.

According to Zabrocky, success is ‘going in and taking these high potential individuals and developing them, finding out their ambitions and finding out what additional development is needed for them to be brought to the senior team.’

In conclusion, in order to empower women efforts are needed across the board from conscious policy-making to legislation, enforcement of that legislation to education.

Unfortunately, the maritime industry, like any other sector has been slow in effecting change.

Maritime communication professional Lena Göthberg, a well-known face and voice of the industry, renowned for her podcasts with numerous industry figures, explains that we still have to have this conversation in the industry because there is more talk than action.

“We have rarely seen anyone realise the need for more diverse workgroups,” she said in an interview with Offshore Energy-Green Marine.

“I think it’s kind of a misperception going around, that someone has to give up power to include more others when in reality it’s the other way around.”

Göthberg explained that the key impediment to having more women in the sector as well as having more female representation in senior roles is the mindset, and the reluctance of the industry to change preferring the status quo.

One of the potential paths to incentivize greater representation of women could be digitalization, as it provides a more level-playing field for women with a myriad of opportunities.

To sum up, we all have to agree, there is still a long way to go before we stop having this conversation as so much ground needs to be covered to empower women and have greater gender balance in the sector.

Until then, talking about these issues is one of the things we can do to effect change.