IMO AND WISTA INTERNATIONAL - WOMEN IN MARITIME SURVEY
Circular Ref: A(21)33
Issue Date: 23 Feb 2021
Members are invited to complete the first Women In Maritime survey conducted by the IMO and WISTA international. The survey is open until 30 June 2021. Each company should complete the survey only once.
As the survey does not clearly define who may qualify as a “woman”, the Secretariat reached out to the organisers through the ICS for clarification.
This is indeed a very sensitive matter as in many cultures, based on patriarchal norms, definitions of gender could be rather rigid and traditional, which may not necessarily conform to how an individual may identify. For example, one may be biologically/anatomically male, but, may identify as a woman (sometimes or all the time).
Yet, in a traditional setting such an individual may be mis-gendered as being a male.
Further to our request for clarification, we have received the following response:
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"By “women”, we mean anyone identifying as a woman, including transgender, gender neutral, gender fluid, including those who may identify as women despite being biologically male.”
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In light of this clarification, we encourage members to exercise extreme sensitivity to this issue when completing the survey. We would further suggest that where this data may not be present, companies may request their employees (onboard and ashore) to advise them on how they identify when it comes to their gender. This would of course, be on a purely voluntary basis.