NEEDED – More women on board

By Mike Jarrett *

The global maritime industry is experiencing a serious shortage of human beings qualified to work as seafarers.  Cries of concern started many years ago but increased to crescendo as 2024 entered its final quarter. Maritime cargo movement was in trouble for want of able and available personnel to work on board ships.

Statistics vary slightly from one organization to the next but it may be safe to say that there are approximately 50,000 ocean-going merchant ships, registered in more than 150 sovereign states, now traversing Earth’s oceans. Seafaring staff aboard these ships total approximately 1.9 million persons, of which just under 900,000 are officers and just over one million are non-officer positions.  Of that number, approximately 24,000 are women. Indeed, the BIMCO Seafarer Workforce Report had previously (in 2021) noted: female seafarers in the world represent only about 1.2% of the global seafarer workforce.

REALITY

Reality is, global shipping now moves about 90% of the world’s export-import cargo. The shipping industry is experiencing a shortfall in the number of human beings required to achieve efficiency in shipping operations. But, there are continuing imbalances that starve the industry of vitally needed personnel and particularly women. Many are the reports of practices and behaviour on board that make life at sea especially difficult for women.

Gender discrimination has been identified as the biggest problem facing women seafarers.

In 2022, the Global Maritime Forum established All Aboard Alliance (the Alliance) with the intention of making the global maritime industry more diverse, equitable and inclusive. One of the Alliance’s first actions was establishment of the Diversity@Sea workstream. Its mission: to study and address gender imbalance at sea; while, exploring methods of making careers at sea “…more diverse, inclusive and attractive to a broader pool of talent”.  

MAJOR CHALLENGES

The first Diversity@Sea Report no.1 identified a total of 15 major challenges (referred to as ‘pain points’) which the survey sample of 115 women seafarers identified as troubling and painful. These 15 pain points were categorised under four sub-heads:

  • difficulty for women of succeeding professionally at sea (i.e., being perceived as less competent than men; not having equal access to training or tasks onboard and having to outperform male peers to get respected or promoted).
  • social relations onboard (e., feeling isolated or unsupported because of their gender, the concern of gossip or rumours, or power abuse or sexual harassment and sexual misconduct onboard).
  • employment challenges at sea (i.e., service contracts at sea being too long, lack of family planning options such as maternity leave or sea-shore rotation programmes, resulting in many women having to choose between a career at sea OR starting a family, in turn pushing women seafarers to find employment elsewhere, and finally, many companies still not willing to recruit women seafarers).
  • physical conditions onboard (i.e., lack of access to female sanitary products onboard or lack of access to adequately fitted Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as boiler suites, fire gloves etc., or lack of access to designated women’s changing rooms, bathrooms, etc. onboard).

 GLOBAL ACTION

Altogether, the difficulties and challenges being experienced by personnel in the maritime sector (including gender and nationality discrimination) speak to a need for global action. The fact that global shipping is currently short of seafarers while, at the same time, women seafarers are finding conditions and work practices on board ship discriminatory, insulting and hostile demands urgent global attention.

Global maritime trade will need, according to one estimate, an additional 89,000 officers on board ships by 2026. As to how this target might be achieved in such a short period of time, when 29% of women seafarers unequivocally identify ‘gender discrimination’ as an obstacle to career development, is a question that begs an answer.

Gender discrimination in the maritime sector is a barrier to global trade, progress and development. That is today’s reality. []

FIRST PUBLISHED: September 22, 2025

#WomenInMaritime #WiMC #WomenSeafarers #GenderDiscrimination

* Mike Jarrett, author and Journalist, is Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Portside Caribbean.

– Mike Jarrett