Maritime Gender Equality: Bridging the Gap

[Lynda Bradford]

March is when Women's Day is celebrated across the World with many organisations celebrating the achievements of women but also identifying where much is needing to be done to bridge the gender gap.

Women make up an estimated 2% of the maritime industry including crew in hospitality on cruise ships.  According to certification and service records females account for 1% for qualified seafarers, so it is evident that more needs to be done to attract and retain women in the maritime industry.

The International Maritime Organisation IMO published an article in 2019 that identifies some of the issues faced by women and action taken to address these issues.

"Empowering Women in the Maritime Community" was selected as the World Maritime Day theme for 2019. This provided an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of gender equality, in line with the SDGs, and to highlight the important contribution of women all over the world to the maritime sector.

In 2019 Ocean Economist published an article with links to other web sites that discuss and provide more information on bridging the gender gap.


In 2023 WISTA International published a link to the second edition of the Gender Diversity Booklet giving an indication of some of the situations encountered by women seafarers, which suggest that although improvements are being made there is still a lot to be done.

[Rod]

I was watching an interview with Captain Kate McCue of Celebrity Cruise lines and the gender issue is kinda sorta brought up. She is aware of it but did have the honesty to say that with female Captains, Cunard beat Celebrity. She was number 5 in the female Captains list.
She takes her cat with her to any ship she commands!