Gender diversity in maritime is extremely fragmented by sector, according to data from the newly- published 2021 IMO (International Maritime Organisation)-WISTA (Women’s International Shipping & Trading Association) Women in Maritime Survey Report. 

The data from the report, launched on the first IMO International Day for Women in Maritime, held on May 18, revealed that women account for only 29 per cent of the overall workforce in the global maritime industry and 20 per cent of the workforce of national maritime authorities in the IMO Member States.

The report, based on the data from companies within the maritime industry, and, separately, from IMO Member States, highlighted great variation amongst individual sub-sectors. According to data gathered from Member States, search and rescue teams in national maritime authorities accounted for significantly fewer women staff (just 10 per cent) as compared to female diplomats (33 per cent) and training staff (30 per cent).

Industry data showed that women seafarers still make up just 2 per cent of the crewing workforce and are predominately found in the cruise sector, while in ship owning companies they made up 34 per cent of the workforce. The maritime associations make up for 16 per cent.

The women associations of Kenya and Comoros led the table for female seafarers. They were followed by cruise companies from New Zealand and Spain, making up 10 times the proportion of women seafarers globally.

Respondent companies headquartered in China, the world’s largest maritime country, reported an almost statistically negligible number of women workforce at 0.14 per cent. Of the 54,211 crew of the Chinese companies, just 76 were women.

Also, the Philippines — which along with China was the biggest employers of seafarers in the survey — had just 434, or 1.16 per cent, women of the 37,334 crew employed.

According to the report, many of the surveyed segments do not employ seafarers or engineers, but still provide pivotal services to the maritime industry. Thus, it has distinguished between core roles – directly involving the provision of the service with which the company is concerned – and nonoperational, support, and administrative roles.

For example, in the towage/salvage/dredging industries, women employed accounted for 10 per cent and of those, 8 per cent were of core roles. The bunkering industry, recorded 10 per cent, and of those, 9 per cent occupied core roles.

The lowest percentage of women were employed in the surveyed offshore sector, at 4 per cent. Of those, women held 6 per cent of core roles.

In marine insurance, women made up 51 per cent of the workforce, while crewing agencies and crew training segments had 55 per cent.

Looking at the distribution of the ranks that women work in, 39 per cent of women within the surveyed companies work in mid-management, 28 per cent in technical roles, and 48 per cent in administrative and support roles. Of the companies that stated that they had a board, the share of female board members was 28 per cent.

Within the C-level positions, of the more than 500 companies that participated, 125 have female CEOs, 127 female chief HR officers, and 109 have female chief financial officers.

The majority of respondents stated that their female workforce was between 25–44 years old, followed by 45–54 year-olds.

“Benchmarking the current state of the sector is vital to measure where we are, and where we need to go. The Women in Maritime Survey 2021 shines a spotlight on areas in which IMO Member States and the wider maritime industry are performing well – and, more importantly, those where additional attention, resources and encouragement are needed,” said IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim. “By actively empowering women with the requisite skills, maintaining a barrier free working environment, we create truly sustainable systems of gender equality,” he added.

“The knowledge we have gathered about gender diversity in the maritime industry through this first Women in Maritime Survey 2021 is an important step in our ambition to create holistic gender diversity. As a first snapshot, this survey gives telling evidence of how much work still needs to be done. But it also shows us where there are a few bright spots. The maritime industry can see for itself which sectors are pushing ahead with diversity, and which are not,” said WISTA International President Despina Panayiotou Theodosiou.

Ongoing diversity efforts

The survey was conducted in 2021 through online assessments sent to IMO Member States and companies and is one of the activities under the 2020 IMO-WISTA Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on promoting greater diversity and inclusion through enhanced cooperation activities in the maritime sector.

IMO and WISTA intend to repeat the survey and produce future reports to measure progress and guide appropriate allocation of resources and capacity building efforts.

Meanwhile, The Mission to Seafarers also published a report called Beyond the 2 per cent, Women Seafarers and their Lives at Sea: Reflecting on Our Call to Care. The report is intended to act as a discussion document for the charity and other maritime welfare providers. It considers the unique challenges faced by women at sea and how organisations can tailor their support to contribute towards a better future for female seafarers.