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TH
17 CONVOCATION
The Maritime India Vision 2030 document focuses on “Building a strong ecosystem
for seafarers” – In order to nurture world class seafarers, it is necessary to develop a
strong ecosystem encouraging participation of women, developing an effective E-
governance and recruitment system to increase ease of access for seafarers and
improve transparency.

The Global example of increasing women participation in Seafarers of Taipei is cited
– Taipei has achieved a significant women participation as seafarers through active
marketing and implementation of a recruitment mandate. As a result, the share of
women seafarers reached over 3.5 % against the global average of about 2 %. The
contribution factors are (a) introduction of an act to provide fair opportunities for
participation in Maritime Education and training – Gender Equality Education Act
2019 (b) Active usage of media to promote women seafarers through micro movies
and press conferences – Marketing and promotion (c) Chinese Taipei shipping
companies employ women seafarers as a part of their CSR – Corporate Social
Responsibility (d) Specialized programs of introductions of gender diversity
programs to raise awareness and (e) State owned shipping companies are required
to recruit female nautical candidates – a recruitment mandate.

The Maritime India Vision 2030 flags launch of ‘Women Seafarer’ program with four
prongs-
(a) Awareness and marketing – increasing awareness regarding women seafarer
roles through career counseling/ marketing campaigns and publicizing women
seafarer success stories to improve sentiment
(b) Incentivization – on supply side – by leveraging scholarships and promote

participation through waving tuition fees and on demand side – by evaluating
mandating domestic shipping companies to hire women seafarers
(c) by promoting gender sensitization and zero tolerance gender discrimination

(d) For seafarers onshore – launching a buddy program and counseling support if
needed.

The Maritime India Vision 2030 underlines that to develop a holistic ecosystem, it is
important to ensure the well-being of seafarers. At present, there is limited
awareness and knowledge about the mental wellbeing of seafarers. This should be
addressed through establishment of port welfare committees.

As it was mentioned, women in India have only 0.5 % share in onboard seafarers.
The lack of participation is mainly due to limited knowledge of this career
opportunity, lack of incentivization from shipping lines and cultural bias. To address
this issue an awareness campaign should be started to publicize the success stories

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