Women Participation in Marine Industry
The Relation Ship between the Participation of Woman in Maritime Sectors and Various Policy Organizations
Women represent a considerable portion of the world's labor force. However they face the hurdles of wage discrimination, harassment, and occupational segregation which ultimately limit their economic advancement. Historically, marine industry does not tend to be a successful career path for women. However, with the passage of time women have penetrated quite deeply in this marine industry. This essay highlights the participation of women in marine industry and the role played by policy making organizations like International Transport Federation (ITF), Seafarers International Research Center (SIRC), International Labor Organization (ILO), and International Maritime Organization (IMO). It explains the extent to which these various marine bodies are addressing the issue of gender.
The Relation Ship between the Participation of Woman in Maritime Sectors and Various Policy Organizations
Traditionally marine industry has been dominated by men. With the passage of time, women started to participate in marine jobs like stewardesses, crew members, hotel staff etc. However, women need to struggle well to gain employment and promotion in the maritime industry. Organizations like International Marine Organization (IMO), International Labor Organization (ILO), International Transport Worker's Federation (ITF), and Seafarer's International Research Center (SIRC) are core organizations which play in important role in taking initiatives in measuring the participation rate of women, their recruitment and retention, identifying good practice and recommending measures to better integrate women into shipboard communities.
Women only constitute 1-2% of 1.25 million seafarers. The share of women in marine industry varies by region, company, sector and country. Most of the women are employed in passenger ships as hotel staffs, which comprise of both ferries and cruise ships. According to the survey by SIRC/ILO, 94 per cent of women work in passenger ships while only 6 per cent were employed at cargo ships with majority of them working in hotels or catering sector (Belcher et. al, 2003). Trade unions also have low women participation. The teaching and research staff at majority of the marine training institutions is also dominated by men. Most of the companies do not consider women as appropriate for carrying out the laborious work at sea and thus do not hire them. Not only this, training institutions also demonstrate discrimination against women by considering them to be less loyal candidates in comparison to their male counterparts. Women are considered to be more likely to leave the job at sea, especially after their marriage. Thus most of the Asian and European countries have extremely low participation of women in this sector. Such misconceptions and stereotypes limit the participation of women in marine industry.
The recruitment of women in marine industry and their retention does not depend solely on market demand. Marine regulating agencies, trade unions, and shipping company policies play a vital role in implementing appropriate policies that will determine whether women will join in and remain with the marine sector (Wu, 2005). The essay will now discuss the influential role of all the four organizations in enhancing women participation in marine industry.
The International Marine Organization (IMO)
IMO plays an integral role in recognizing the importance of women in marine sector, despite the fact that the industry remains highly male-oriented. IMO encourages greater participation of women in this industry, although the industry involves high technicalities and specializations. IMO recognized that women form an underutilized and underdeveloped resource which could cater the marine industry well and solve several problems encounter by the marine world. The Integrated Technical Cooperation program founded by IMO tends to be its core initiative in women employment from developing countries in shipping industry (IMO, 2008). IMO produced innovative strategy for the integration of women into the maritime sector in 1988 and the implementation started with the IMO Women in Development Program in 1989. This program revolved around providing equal access of maritime training to women through both mainstream programs and gender specific projects. The success of IMO'S initiatives was seen with the increased percentage of women students at the World Maritime University, which increased from 6 per cent to 30 per cent in the past decade (IMO, 2008).
IMO's global program for Integration of Women in the Marine Sector aims at improving women's access to marine training and technology and increase women representation at senior management level. The first medium-term plan for integration of women in marine sector was covered during 1992-96 and revised later on during the period 1997-2001 (Belcher et. al, 2003). The plan's main objective was to integrate women in mainstream marine activities and consolidate women integration in marine sector as a...
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now