Gender Equality in the Maritime Seafaring Industry: A Study on Indian Seafarers

The maritime industry constitutes the backbone of global commerce, accounting for nearly 90% of world merchandise trade by volume. Encompassing shipping, port operations, shipbuilding, offshore activities, logistics, and maritime governance, the sector plays an indispensable role in global economic development. Paradoxically, however, the maritime profession remains one of the most severely gender-imbalanced industries worldwide. Women represent a disproportionately small fraction of the global seafaring workforce, and their involvement in technical, operational, and command-level roles is critically limited. International bodies such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) have consistently advocated for gender inclusion, yet structural impediments continue to obstruct meaningful progress. While female enrolment in maritime academies has recorded incremental improvements, translating such academic access into sustained career advancement remains a formidable challenge. Scholarship on occupational health, community vulnerability, and workplace inequity provides a broader lens through which gender-specific barriers in demanding professions may be understood (Vettriselvan & Anto, 2018; Vettriselvan & Rajan, 2019; Ashifa, 2019; Ranganathan et al., 2024). This study investigates the structural, socio-cultural, organizational, and psychological determinants that shape women’s access to and progression within the Indian maritime sector, thereby contributing to evidence-based policy formulation.