Addressing the Trajectory of Cultural and Gender Discrimination among Marine Women Officers

Abstract

Seafaring is openly challenging working circumstances for females. For the last twenty-two years, females in western countries have been interested in joining the fleet, but as the captaincy roles aboard, their numbers are minimal compared to other jobs. In every working place, females always face many unusual problems, which are more in seafaring. The manuscript derives the discrimination factors of marine women officers (MWOs) onboard due to cultural (or racial) or being a woman using the experiences of 149 women officers from 18 different countries. Two experiences such as onboard discrimination due to cultural reasons (DDCR) and not being promoted in the company as being women (NPCW) for MWOs are considered the responses in the present study.  It was found out that mean DDCR is positively associated with age (P=0.0313), nationality (P=0.0047), current position onboard (P=0.1051), while it is negatively associated with cohabitation (P=0.0137) and type of contract (P=0.0719). Variance of DDCR is negatively associated with male companions' support (P=0.1432). Also, mean NPCW is negatively associated with her male companions' support (P<0.0001), while its variance is positively associated with professional qualification (P=0.1317). It was found out herein that MWOs from other nations (except Spanish) at older ages, second class officers, staying single with temporary contracts are highly discriminated against based on cultural (or racial) reasons. In addition, MWOs with higher male companions' support are very rarely promoted in the company.