International Day for Women in Maritime will be observed on 18 May every year, following a resolution adopted by the IMO Assembly. It will celebrate women in the industry and support work to address the current gender imbalance in maritime.

Message by the President of WISTA International Despina Panayiotou Theodosiou

Hello to everyone

This week sees the inauguration of what will become an annual day of celebration and focus. We will be celebrating May 18th as the International Day for Women in Maritime from this year onwards.

Over this week, I am so proud to see so many initiatives around the world to celebrate. To celebrate that, we finally have a day which we can use to have a diversity health check of our industry, a day we can remind ourselves and others of the roles women play in shaping the transformation of the shipping and maritime space.

WISTA International has worked diligently with the IMO to ensure that the legacy and achievements we saw in 2019 when the IMO’s theme was Empowering Women in the maritime community continue. For me, the creation of this day shows that our industry can work in unison.

And May 18th is a chance for us to bring men and women together to openly discuss our progress to create equality and diversity in our maritime communities.

Yes, there are challenges, but we must talk about them, and we must work together to find a way to overcome them.

So, one way to help achieve equality and diversity is to look at how we can build up training to ensure young women have the ability, and of course, the desire, to come into our industry. Then we must make young women and young professionals more visible. And we must offer them the recognition that secures their professional careers remain in our sector.

Let us be proud of what our country Cyprus has achieved on that front. In our small but certainly influential country, we have seen several female leaders. And when I look at our industry gatherings, I can see young women ready to work hard and forge careers in our transforming industry.

Thank you for listening. With diversity, we make Cyprus a shining light in our global sector.

Thank you

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