The International Maritime Organization welcomes this year’s United Nations theme for International Women’s Day 2021 of “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.”

This important message aligns with the various activities undertaken by IMO over the years to make the maritime sector more gender inclusive and to enhance the contribution of women as key maritime stakeholders.

IMO Secretary-General Kitack Lim said: “International Women’s Day is the perfect opportunity for everyone in the maritime sector to ask: ‘Are we doing enough to make our industry more diverse?’

“We have seen time and again that having women in all roles, particularly in leadership creates a more prosperous and dynamic workforce. Moving forward, we must embrace these principles to ensure a sustainable recovery from the impacts of the COVID19 Pandemic, and to shape a fairer future for all,” the Secretary General continued.

As part of IMO’s remit to meet the Sustainable Development Goal for gender equality (SDG 5) under the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the organization has been taking tangible steps to make maritime more inclusive, including the Women in Maritime Programme, 2019 World Maritime Theme, and more.

He said “It is vital that the maritime sector shows support for the many talented women in our industry. We take this support seriously and at IMO we launched our ‘my maritime mentor’ online campaign to celebrate International Women’s Day, and to highlight the 2021 World Maritime Theme ‘Seafarers: at the core of shipping’s future’. We encourage everyone to recognize the support and to share their stories about their inspiring mentors in the maritime industry, who have helped them shine brighter.”

“We are currently working with WISTA International to gather data for the first “Women in Maritime” survey, to assess the participation of women in the maritime sector. The results of this will create a baseline for our industry to measure effort and track progress. I look forward to working with each and every one of you to continue on the path to making maritime more inclusive,” he said.

IMO has focused its diversity efforts via its gender and capacity building programme, which is now in its thirty-third year. The Women in Maritime gender programme supports women in both shore-based and sea-going roles.

This programme spearheaded activities around the IMO’s 2019 World Maritime Theme, ‘Empowering Women in the Maritime Community’. The programme has supported the creation of a number of regional associations for women in the maritime sector across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, Arab States and the Pacific Islands. Women from developing countries are also being given support to move into leadership roles via sponsorships to the Maritime SheEO leadership accelerator programme.

To increase visibility of women in maritime, IMO has produced a video showing how the Women in Maritime Programme is helping to support gender diversity. It has also made available a photo bank of images of women in maritime from submitted content. The use of these real-life photos in news stories, social media posts and brochures is vital to more diverse representation in the maritime world.