Women in Shipping Virtual Summit Day 1Monday, 20 September 2021 - BST (British Summer Time, GMT+1)

There is a good deal of talk about diversity but talking on its own makes little sense. What we’ve learned through our Women in Maritime series is that we need to highlight the role of women throughout the maritime industry and enable them to spread that message far and wide.
Through this series of ongoing interviews, we’ve started to build a knowledge base of women’s experiences around the challenges and successes they’ve seen. What’s more, women bring a unique viewpoint to the maritime industry and we’ve taken time with each interviewee to explore their perspectives on the now and the future and where we should be focusing our attention. This presentation will take you through key learnings from across the interviews, like what it’s been like to run a port through a global pandemic or how we should be working towards attracting more women to the industry.

Top Three Takeaways for Audience

1. An example of a initiative designed to bring female voices to the forefront of the maritime industry.
2. Key learnings from the interview series and how we’re looking to build this into the ongoing initiative.
3. A handful of stories from the interviews that highlight the importance of connection and sharing.

Improving data availability and access especially with a view to implementing the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 5) on gender equality and women empowerment is valuable, including for researchers in the field as well for organizations such as IMO, ILO, UNCTAD. Improving data on gender across the maritime supply chain sector is key in this regard.

Women had been placing in the global maritime industry since the beginning of 1900s where they worked in different roles of shipping, chartering, brokerage, seafaring, technical departments, and naval architecture. Climbing up the ladders in their career paths had full of big challenges. The evolution of the challenges on maritime careers has transformed by years; with the pandemic situation, it has changed more than the expected.

While job descriptions have been changing, the power’s definition is also in a change where it is called ‘Resilience’. Resilience is typically defined as the capacity to recover from difficult life events and the importance of resilience in the maritime workplace has become more crucial.

As SheFarers Platform, we would like to enlighten how the resilience will become an asset for women’s career in the maritime industry on the way to a sustainable maritime workplace and maritime companies’ future.

For the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO), having a diverse workforce is key to ensuring we have the broad range of skills and approaches needed to support commercial shipping and enable safe, secure and thriving oceans.
That’s why we’ve been taking significant steps to attract, retain and nurture a diverse range of people across the organisation. This includes offering support to women returning to work after career breaks; taking measures to eliminate gender bias in recruitment; our award-winning STEM outreach programme (of which 69% of our STEM ambassadors are women); and our Women’s Network steering group at the UKHO.

In this talk, Cathrine Armour, UKHO Chief Customer Officer, will discuss the impact of these initiatives in addressing the gender balance, how these efforts have been sustained during the pandemic, and how the organisation will continue to support the Ministry of Defense’s Diversity and Inclusion agenda.

Public health policies have been built on supporting and protecting people. Before COVID-19, polices were initiated during stable times and results were predictable. However, the pandemic needed swift action and regulatory change to protect communities. The turbulent changes between lockdowns resulted in policies which both benefitted and hindered.

Balancing ones professional and personal life was far simpler when employees were able to work in large open plan offices and there were clear cut boundaries. Now, as we work in kitchens, spare rooms and have limits on our personal lifestyles, it is easy to blur those lines. Considering seafarers as an extreme case study emphasizes the need to find real solutions to protect mental and physical wellbeing and ensure the work-life balance is stable and maintained.

We need to actively ensure new policy is not damaging our communities and individuals more than protecting them in the way they were designed.

As some businesses were unable to perform their work, others, such as maritime consultancies, were listed as ‘key’ or ‘essential’ services, meaning the impact of restrictions and lockdowns had varied impact on both personal and working life. This session studies the impact of these measures on the work- life balance, specifically of women. The methodology adopted, a casual- comparative quantitative research, based on questionnaire of 45 females employed across the globe, provides insight into global challenges of women in 2020, and long- term impact it may have on the industry.

For a long time flexible work arrangements have been considered as a solution to working mothers. 2020 created the perfect test environment, leading all of us to ask what are we going to keep moving forward and what does the future of work look like? What about childcare and paternal leave? What are companies likely to adopt as working routines beyond 2021 and what does that mean for women, mobility and access?

A love of travelling and the prospect of a long-term career attracted Ulrika to the maritime sector, with her first role being a tour escort in hospitality in 1994. Since then, she has gained vast experience in the shipping sector with positions including tour manager and executive PA and a stint as a port lecturer specializing in Scandinavian ports. Ulrika’s current role sees her managing repairs and administration at SeaTec, part of global ship management company, V.Group.
Ulrika will touch on her experiences to date and discuss how the sector has changed over the years, with safety becoming central to all operations. She will outline the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead and explain why she passionately believes the sector is an excellent career choice for women.

On a ship of average size and weight in tonnage of 65000 Tons, carrying an average of 2950 persons, including 2200 passengers and 750 crew members, we find that the number of female crew members is only 153 against 597 male crew members. Of these, and this can be extrapolated to a cargo ship, the crew members in positions of absolute responsibility on board a ship, in other words, those who must be employed on board for the smooth running of the ship, are mainly men. In fact, women on board cruise ships are usually mainly in charge of customer welfare, ensuring that the passengers' stay is to their liking and solving any problems that may arise during their stay on board.
Taking into account the above mentioned in this text and remembering that for Covid-19 reasons we did not have passengers on board, we observe that there are no women occupying positions that are indispensable for the basic functioning of the ship.

In this session we discuss the findings obtained through 47 structured online interviews of women seafarers between 201‐2018 within GECAMET scientific study. Respondents are women leaders with successful careers on board. Some was data collected from women leaders defined as ex-seafarers working in managerial positions on shore. Results of the interviews provide an excellent scientific source for inspirational leadership.

Marine Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) are being built and operated at an ever increasing rate as technology continues to develop. The worldwide MASS market is worth $1.1bn annually and this figure is expected to grow by 6.96% in 2025.

In this session, I aim to explore these new opportunities. From offering a different perspective to seafaring positions, through to emergent roles in marine robotics and engineering. I plan to explore existing barriers and challenges in encouraging and retaining women in the maritime industry and specifically how these new opportunities in the MASS sector can provide long-term prospects for a more equal gender-balance in the maritime industry.

Learn what are the best practices across industries that can make you an employer of choice for women. Understand the impact of language and policies on your employees growth and loyalty. Find ways to assess your workplace culture and welcome more voices and perspectives.

COVID has changed the way we work in many ways and the most poignant is the lack of, or dramatically reduced face to face interaction. In this session we ask our panelists to reflect on the impact of this

• the way we do business: what, if any variances can be observed in the level and quality of business agreements, given that such a central part of business - networking, could not be carried out?
• the way we work with each other: what, if any differences have emerged in the way people interact with peers and business leaders in the context of remote work and a conceivably flatter organization?
• the way we feel about our work?