Prejudice against women seafarers exists at every stage from the classroom to the engine room, according to a new report on global employment policies and practices at sea. Martin Whitfield reports

More women are going to sea than ever before, and employers say they perform as well or better than their male counterparts. Yet prejudice still runs through every stage of the training and recruitment process. This is according to an extensive report from the Seafarers’ International Research Centre (Sirc), which is the result of a research project commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The problem is not purely a political one. Better recruitment and retention of women at sea would have at least two major practical benefits: it would reduce the shortage of officers (currently four per cent of the total qualified officer workforce, or 16,000 in number, and the shortage is expected to rise to 12 per cent or 46,000 by the year 2010). It would also provide a genuine use for the many Maritime Educational Trust institutions all over the world threatened with closure because of a shortage of students.

Yet the route to cultural change is impeded at all turns. Governments, shipowners and managers are part of the coalition of resistance, even though every one of them would benefit from bringing more women into the industry. On the Indian sub-continent, for example, many Maritime Education and Training (MET) institutions are not allowed to recruit women to nautical courses. One Asian country, with 31 MET institutions and a large supply of labour, is not allowed by central government legislation to recruit women. In most European countries, cadets are recruited then sponsored through college by their employers.

At the 17 MET institutions surveyed for the Sirc study, 6,518 students were being trained to work at sea, and 10 per cent of them (647) were women. Only four institutions had an equal opportunities policy covering the recruitment of women. Once at college, women tended to enrol on navigation courses rather than engineering courses although both are, in theory, open to them. Only three per cent of female students at the 17 MET institutions surveyed were being trained as engineers.

The college staff, when asked why this bias existed, would often refer to the working conditions in engine rooms. One declared that maritime engineering “is not a proper subject for women” and added that it was not only hot and dirty, but a place where a woman was more likely to be sexually abused.

In a small number of cases, the staff themselves were wary of teaching women, failing to understand why they would want to become seafarers. Generally, they showed little enthusiasm about promoting their courses to women students.

Some colleges also require women students to do additional study modules, primarily to train them for shore-based jobs. “We genuinely hope that these girls can have the opportunity to get jobs on ships, but we know it may not be easy for them to be employed and we must be responsible for their future,” one respondent said. “We genuinely want them to be successful seafarers, but we have to prepare for otherwise, to ensure these girls will get some maritime related jobs.”

Compulsory courses

However these compulsory courses for women cost double the usual maritime training fees – so colleges themselves are discriminating against women. None of the colleges surveyed had gender issues as part of its core curriculum. “Students should not be taught about the problem before the problem appears,” said one.

Despite the constraints on recruitment in many parts of the world, the recruitment of women trainee seafarers is increasing in several. But when there is pressure to take on more women, it comes from the supply side – recruiting men is growing increasingly difficult.

The Sirc-ILO study concludes that women are seriously under-represented in all sectors apart from the cruise-ferry sector: “The majority of companies have not developed specific policies relating to the employment of women. A number … have an unofficial strategy of rejecting applications from women seafarers. There was also evidence to suggest that within companies, women might be barred from specific and mostly supervisory posts, such as bosun and chief engineer.”

Once women become established in a career at sea – having overcome more hurdles en route – women officers may find their companies prepared to offer them the same career openings available to their male colleges, the report says. But such companies are few, and women often encounter another invisible wall when promotion comes with a move to a new company and new prejudices.

When they reach the top

Even when they reach the top of their profession and have long experience, the gender issue refuses to go away. One officer said she often worked with men who had problems taking orders from a woman. An experienced woman captain found herself with the prospect of no pilot to take her ship out of Hong Kong. The local pilot refused to believe his eyes and wanted to disembark when he found he was on a ship with a woman captain.

The Sirc report concludes that there should be immediate action to improve prospects for women. Among its recommendations are:

• Efforts should be made to disseminate many companies’ positive experience of women seafarers
• Companies as well as training institutions should be targeted for the promotion of women at entry level
• Companies recruiting female cadets should try to place them on ships with senior female officers (and preferably captains)
• Sexual harassment policies should be developed across the industry
• More efforts should be made to promote seafaring as a career suitable for both sexes.

Women Seafarers: Global Employment Policies and Practices will be published by the International Labour Organisation in September 2003. It is basedon interviews with maritime regulators, lecturers and principals of maritime academies, ship managers and owners, trade union officers and women seafarers.

Martin Whitfield is a journalist specialising in industrial affairs.  

Then… Post-1945 – women appeared as crew members on board cargo ships, most often on Swedish ships as stewardesses, cooks and radio officers. 1960s – women were deliberately recruited as officer cadets, mainly because of difficulties in Europe in recruiting young men. 1970s – coincidentally, Chinese women seafarers crewed the world’s first (and probably only) women-officer-only cargo ship, the Fengtao, during the Cultural Revolution. The shipping company concerned stopped employing women on cargo ships in the 1980s. Mid-1980s – for the next 15 years, the shipping world lost interest in recruiting women because of flagging-out, overcapacity, declining freight rates and new sources of male seafarers in Asia and Europe.  …and now The cruise shipping sector is growing at 9.6 per cent a year and the number of women is burgeoning. This is mostly in hotel, entertaining and catering jobs – although women are increasingly being found in managerial and supervisory roles. Women account for more than 18 per cent of the seafaring labour force in the cruise fleet (2000) – but most women seafarers are employed as hotel staff, regardless of nationality. The world maritime industry is aware of a potentially serious shortage of well trained officers (expected to be 12 per cent of posts by the year 2010) The IMO’s 1988 strategy for integrating women into the maritime sector in 1988 – the Women in Development Program (WID) – succeeded in raising the percentage of women at the highest level of maritime training