Shore-side maritime has moved considerably faster on gender balance than the seagoing side, which is unsurprising given the structural barriers to sea time. Chartering, operations, crewing and legal desks in India now routinely shortlist balanced slates.
The blockage sits in roles that require a Certificate of Competency — superintendency, marine assurance, vetting. Those roles draw from a seagoing population that remains overwhelmingly male, so shore hiring inherits the sea pipeline whether it wants to or not.
That is a real constraint, not an excuse. Two things demonstrably help. The first is separating the roles that genuinely require sea time from the ones that have simply always been filled by ex-seafarers — on inspection, a surprising number of the second category exist. The second is sponsoring cadetships, which is slow but is the only thing that changes the pipeline itself.
We publish this because we are asked about it constantly by clients writing diversity commitments into their hiring briefs. The honest answer is that shore-side is where progress is available now, and that is where effort returns the most.
