You have been passionately and dedicatedly working for women’s empowerment, gender parity, and equality in shipping. After all this journey, what is your perspective of women in the shipping industry?
Definitely there has been an improvement; we see more women, we see more women visible in the maritime industry, and we see more women in higher positions. But I think it’s still at the first of CMD of Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and first woman on so and so positions. We are gradually moving from the first to many more women, but that journey is painstakingly slow, and it’s the pace that needs to speed up; otherwise, it’s going to take a very long time.
As the world is changing fast with new generations coming up and all the barriers are being taken away, then why is gender parity not happening and why is this slow?
There are two reasons: one is that businesses do not see apart from a model case for more women; they don’t see a genuine business case for diversity. There is not enough data available to prove the relation between having a more diverse workforce and higher profitability, higher productivity and so on, especially within the maritime industry. So, obviously, for businesses, the bottom line is the most important thing, and with the maritime industry also being cyclical, they have to be careful about their profits. So one is that if we have more data available that will prove that having a more diversified workforce is better for the business, it would definitely help convince companies.
The second thing is that there is a lack of gender sensitization, which is something made mandatory by the DG Shipping. It’s something that we need to have on shore; we need more gender sensitization across companies to all levels within companies, and that only will help. Because without that, the mindsets are difficult to change. So, some sort of training has to be given; we cannot expect that change to happen overnight. There has to be a contestant effort and constant training or communication being given.
But most importantly, it’s the leaders and CEOs of the companies who have to drive the change from the top to the bottom. Because if it is something important to them, if they are vocal about it, then the rest of their people will listen. Instead, what usually people do is they create a diversity committee; usually it is headed by a woman comprising of women, and then it serves no purpose because people are not going to listen to them.
Talking about diversity is something like religion; a lot of leaders don’t want to talk about it because it’s a very sensitive topic. People don’t want to talk about religious topics either because they could be touching on nerves for people, so they shy away from talking about it at all. And that kind of defeats the issue when leaders are not talking about it; they are not communicating about it up to down, and then people down the line are not going to take it seriously either. Even companies’ communication channels, like websites, when they advertise for people, should have equal representation of men and women; their language should be gender sensitive, so that it attracts both men and women to apply. Because unfortunately studies have shown that for a job only women meet 100% of the criteria they apply for, whereas men, even if they meet 50% of the criteria, will apply. Women also need to believe in themselves; they also need to put themselves out there and take the lead.
You mentioned one major challenge. Is it also because talented women are not available in shipping?
Women are definitely available; companies are not just looking hard enough, and may be women are not attracted to this industry because they don’t know much about it.
How did you address this so far? How do organizations like you and others get into the sensitization part of it?
What Maritime SheEO does is that we work on different aspects; one is that we have a leadership accelerator program for women in maritime. Because we believe that women cannot rise unless they are given the right skills. But most often they are not given opportunity for growth; they are not selected for leadership training programs. So, we were lucky to have funding from the International Maritime Organization (IMO), where we conducted three cohorts of 30 women each, which means 90 women went through the leadership training, and we saw very positive results in these women. We saw them raising in their careers; we saw that they were able to do much better; they got promotions, and so on.
The second way we work is that we do a lot of research. The first survey we did in 2018 and we repeated that survey again this year with the funding from the Netherlands Consulate, and we saw that there was an increase; their numbers were better. So, that comparative analysis is important; data is very important. We are going to be now launching a research report for Sri Lanka as well. We have interests from other countries, who have seen what we are doing in India, and they want to repeat that in their countries.
Thirdly, we have gender sensitization programs. We have worked with a lot of corporations, and there is interest coming from a lot more to have gender sensitization programs within their organizations.
So, there are three ways we are tackling it.
Fourth and the major way is obviously creating visibility for women, which we do through our social media channels and our digital magazine called ‘She of Change’ which comes four times a year.
The Maritime SheEO conference brings about amplified voices and brings leaders from different parts of the globe who come to India and speak to our audience about the importance of having more women in maritime. It’s not just repeatedly having the same conversation; the conversations are fresh; the conversations come from leaders across the world with fresh ideas, and we learn so much from their thoughts and their ideas. Then there are certain takeaways that we take from the conference, and then we work up on that.
What is special about this year’s Maritime SheEO conference? What can we expect?
This year’s conference theme is ‘Setting Sails for Equality: Empowering Women Leaders’. It’s also being held on an auspicious day, which is Guru Nanak Jayanti. Why it is significant is because Guru Nanak believed in equality of men and women, and in those times, hundreds of years ago, he said, “How can women be inferior if she gives birth to a man?”.
We are going to be having a great line-up of speakers who are going to have Guy Platten, International Chamber of Shipping, and we are going to have a lot of other speakers from different countries. We are going to be talking about not only the reasons for empowering women in maritime but also going to touch up on the importance of women in technology and personal branding. We have the chairman of Transworld Group, we have Dhruv Kotak from JM Baxi, and we have a lot of male leaders who are going to talk about why it’s important. Usually, it’s just women who talk about why it is important; we have a lot of male leaders who are going to talk about why it’s important to have a diverse workshop.
What is the agenda you have set for yourself in both short and long terms?
There are two more things that I could not mention earlier about what we are doing, and we want to focus more on that.
One, we have the Maritime SheEO community, which is a community of over 500 women from 40 countries; we really want to expand that further to reach other parts of the globe.
We have a very nice mentorship program where we invite mentors from different countries and mentees from different countries, and it worked really well, and that’s something that we really want to expand. It’s beneficial for women; they learn from each other.
Apart from that, what’s really important is getting the decisionmakers to come together. We have requested D G Shipping to form a task force to get everyone together rather than working in silos. If we can bring everyone together rather than working silos, then the strength will be tripled.
What is your message to girls who are thinking of taking up their career in maritime?
I would like to tell them that maritime is a wonderful industry, there is a lot to learn, there is a lot to achieve, they should definitely enter the industry, and they should definitely dream big. Unless you dream big, you are not going to be able to be out there. There would be a lot of change as the industry is rapidly evolving, which will create ample opportunities.
