The Director General of Shipping (DGS) today said the watchdog is planning to liberalise recruitment rules to make it possible for mid-career women seafarers to rise up the hierarchy.
"We are in the process of trying to review the recruitment rules within government to ensure that women have an equal opportunity to not only be on ships, but also after that to enter shore jobs as high positions in government," DGS Malini Shankar said here.
Later, she clarified that the rule changes being planned will apply to recruitments within the DGS itself.
"It's a question with the timing in their lives, which coincides. Their biological cycle goes against the promotion cycle. Just at a time when they should be having promotions, they get married, have children," she elaborated.
Shankar was speaking at the launch of what is probably the world's first non-profit body dedicated exclusively to women, which is seeking to increase their percentage and make shipping lines more gender diverse.
At 3,000, the women seafarers constitute a minuscule 0.6 per cent of the overall headcount in the sector in the country, she said.
The International Women Seafarers Foundation aims to work towards tackling the skewed ratios, its members said.
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