South Korea’s largest shipowner has championed the urgent need for more women to be employed in all areas of shipping.
Tae Soon (TS) Chung, president of Sinokor Merchant Marine, said the issue was among the “most important” facing the shipping industry.
Chung was speaking at Korea Maritime Week in Seoul, where South Korea and several other nations signed a declaration to work for a green shipping transition by 2050.
Speaking as chairman of the Korea Shipowners’ Association, Chung said: “The most important issue at this time is education and specialist training.
“If you go to ships today you see women on board, so we can now fully see that the future of shipping can be female.”
Sinokor has 181 ships on the water, totalling 14.8m dwt, and a further 29 of 1.8m dwt on order, according to data from Clarksons Research.
Chung was speaking at the first International Maritime Organization parallel event in South Korea to mark International Day for Women in Maritime, which was officially 18 May with the event held back to coincide with Korea Maritime Week.
Seung Hwan Cho, South Korean minister of oceans and fisheries, said he was proud the country had its first qualified merchant ship captain in 1995.
“However, there are still many barriers to women,” he said. “We need to look at their status and how we can improve.
“I personally believe the more women working in this industry, the more benefit they will bring.”
Kitack Lim, IMO secretary general, welcomed the recognition of the challenges the industry faced in making a material impact to raise the number of female seafarers, which remains only about 1.2% of crews worldwide.
“Women are under-represented, and this needs to change,” he said. “There needs to be a continuous push for gender equality in line with the United Nations sustainable development goals.”
Later, Lim lead the ceremonial signing of the Seoul Declaration, a diplomatic commitment to aim for zero emissions from shipping by 2050. Among the countries involved in the ceremony were Norway, the UK, Ghana and the Philippines.
The declaration comes just days before the start of crunch talks in London at IMO headquarters to reset the United Nations’ agency member nation’s collective ambition for decarbonisation.
Diplomats involved in the process believe there are grounds for optimism that a deal can be agreed upon, with some of those nations who had been most ambitious and those who were most bitterly opposed both softening their positions a little.
