Why the maritime industry needs more women

In 1918, Vic­to­ria Drum­mond became an appren­tice at the Cale­don Ship­yard in Dundee, the start of a jour­ney to becom­ing Britain’s first female marine engi­neer, earn­ing hon­ours for brav­ery at sea dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. A cen­tu­ry lat­er and Victoria’s per­son­al bat­tle to con­quer the mar­itime indus­try has yet to trans­late into gen­der equal­i­ty.

While progress has been made, sta­tis­tics still show a woe­ful 2 per cent of sea­far­ers world­wide are women, while just a third of glob­al shore-based mar­itime posi­tions are filled by women.

“There is more action today to raise equal­i­ty than ever before and that has to be recog­nised,” says Despina Panayiotou Theo­dosiou, pres­i­dent of the Women’s Inter­na­tion­al Ship­ping & Trad­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (WISTA Inter­na­tion­al) and chief exec­u­tive of Cyprus-based Tototheo Mar­itime. “But sub­stan­tial, effec­tive change needs time, col­lab­o­ra­tion and patience.”

Change is on the rise for the maritime industry

Change is gain­ing momen­tum: The Inter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Orga­ni­za­tion (IMO) has picked empow­er­ing women as its theme for World Mar­itime Day 2019; the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Office is set to hold a glob­al sec­tor meet­ing dis­cussing oppor­tu­ni­ties for women sea­far­ers at the end of Feb­ru­ary; and the Euro­pean Union has a ded­i­cat­ed plat­form for change to pro­mote equal oppor­tu­ni­ties in the trans­port sec­tor.

In the UK, the new Women in Mar­itime Char­ter urges com­pa­nies to sign up to action plans set­ting spe­cif­ic tar­gets on gen­der diver­si­ty.

Around 60 sig­na­to­ries, includ­ing BP Ship­ping, Hapag-Lloyd (UK) and Ste­na Line UK, have already pledged sup­port, with pilot busi­ness­es expect­ed to announce their action plans short­ly.

Susan Clog­gie-Hold­en, who sails as a chief offi­cer and is female cham­pi­on for the Roy­al Fleet Aux­il­iary (RFA), was involved with the charter’s task­force.

“It’s a hid­den indus­try and still seen as a man’s world,” she explains. “We’ll start to see lit­tle wins quick­ly, but big changes will take up to 15 years.”

Vic­to­ria Drum­mond, Britain’s first female marine engi­neer, was award­ed an MBE for brav­ery at sea dur­ing the Sec­ond World War

Steps being taken across the globe to get women into the maritime sector

While the RFA out­per­forms glob­al sta­tis­tics, with 7 per cent women sea­far­ers on its crews, Ms Clog­gie-Hold­en says the “diverse pool of think­ing” need­ed indus­try­wide must be cul­ti­vat­ed through edu­ca­tion in schools and stronger sup­port to retain women already in the sec­tor.

Back in 1988, the IMO launched its now-renamed Women in Mar­itime Pro­gramme. There are sev­en region­al asso­ci­a­tions in Africa, the Mid­dle East, Asia, Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­ca and Pacif­ic, cov­er­ing 70 coun­tries and organ­is­ing reg­u­lar out­reach events.

“Access to these region­al asso­ci­a­tions could go some way to nar­row­ing some of the insti­tu­tion­al bar­ri­ers and cul­tur­al stig­ma that women who enter the mar­itime indus­try face,” says Helen Buni, who leads the IMO pro­gramme.

In India, the state-owned Ship­ping Cor­po­ra­tion of India’s attached Mar­itime Train­ing Insti­tute allows for a “coher­ent pol­i­cy” and “effec­tive affir­ma­tive action” to employ women, accord­ing to World Mar­itime Uni­ver­si­ty asso­ciate pro­fes­sor and for­mer sea­far­er Momoko Kita­da.

And the country’s first female mer­chant navy cap­tain, Rad­hi­ka Menon, last year launched the Inter­na­tion­al Women Sea­far­ers’ Foun­da­tion to raise aware­ness of the pro­fes­sion, pro­tect women’s rights and pro­vide sup­port.

But gen­der-relat­ed chal­lenges are still an issue, says Dr Kita­da, cit­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in work-life bal­ance, access to edu­ca­tion and lead­er­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties. “Aware­ness has been cre­at­ed, but sta­tis­ti­cal­ly the mar­itime indus­try hasn’t made much progress in the past 25 years,” she points out.

Many organ­i­sa­tions are now specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing young women. WISTA Sri Lan­ka has planned ded­i­cat­ed careers days at the Port of Colom­bo for the past four years, with more than 100 stu­dents from nine girls’ schools attend­ing the events.

Diversifying the workforce at major shipping players

Mean­while, major ship­ping com­pa­nies, includ­ing Maer­sk and Hapag-Lloyd, recog­nise the need to diver­si­fy the work­force and sup­port women.

While Hapag-Lloyd does not have spe­cif­ic tar­gets to increase the num­ber of women, its lat­est cohort of 25 marine appren­tices includes sev­en young women – 28 per cent – on a three-year trainee­ship in Ger­many to become a ship mechan­ic, nau­ti­cal offi­cer or tech­ni­cal offi­cer.

An Insta­gram chan­nel shar­ing expe­ri­ences aims to attract tal­ent, while Hapag-Lloyd has a Women’s Busi­ness Forum for inter­nal sup­port.

Attract­ing women is also a pri­or­i­ty for A.P. Moller-Maer­sk as it aims to increase its 2 per cent of women in marine roles and 28 per cent across oth­er posi­tions. “We all play a part in accel­er­at­ing the pace of change,” says Rachel Osikoya, the Dan­ish conglomerate’s head of diver­si­ty. “Mar­itime is a male-dom­i­nat­ed indus­try, so we do have a chal­lenge bring­ing female tal­ent to join us.”

Sub­stan­tial, effec­tive change needs time, col­lab­o­ra­tion and patience — Despina Panayiotou Theo­dosiou, Pres­i­dent of WISTA

Ini­tia­tives include intro­duc­ing the con­cept of uncon­scious bias – the social stereo­types made out­side con­scious aware­ness – to lead­ers, and a mater­ni­ty pol­i­cy with a min­i­mum stan­dard of 18 weeks’ leave world­wide and the option of 20 per cent reduced work­ing hours upon return­ing. This has increased reten­tion rates to 71 per cent, with an ulti­mate goal of 90 per cent.

A cam­paign with the Dan­ish gov­ern­ment, focused on sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and maths, aims to reach out to female stu­dents by show­cas­ing role mod­els in the field.

Mentoring is key when getting women into new industries

BP Ship­ping, where women make up a third of the work­force, recent­ly appoint­ed its sec­ond female chief exec­u­tive after Car­ol Howle took the baton from Susan Dio in Feb­ru­ary.

While it is tight lipped about spe­cif­ic goals or ini­tia­tives in its ship­ping arm, BP’s annu­al report states it is “devel­op­ing men­tor­ing, spon­sor­ship and coach­ing pro­grammes to help more women advance”.

For Kate Pike, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at Solent Uni­ver­si­ty in the Warsash School of Mar­itime Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing, men­tor­ing can be extreme­ly impor­tant because of a lack of role mod­els.

“Bet­ter out­comes for recruit­ment and reten­tion start with edu­ca­tion, train­ing, leg­is­la­tion, and going through the spec­trum of how we can sup­port women and men on board and on shore,” explains Dr Pike. “It’s hard to have a co-ordi­nat­ed response because it’s a glob­al indus­try with mul­ti­cul­tur­al crews, cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences and hier­ar­chies of rank.

“How­ev­er, there is recog­ni­tion of the need to change and an appetite for that. It’s going in the right direc­tion, but it’s going slow­ly.”