The power of visibility – IMO launches photo search for women in maritime
Though the maritime industry is seeing a shift in diversity and is beginning to put gender on the agenda, the absence of images showing women in action remains an issue.
To address this, International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) gender programme is launching a photo search to build its bank of images of women in maritime.
The new IMO image bank will serve as a one stop shop for external audiences to source quality, realistic imagery of women in maritime, for use in news stories, news reports, social media posts, and brochures about shipping and the broader maritime world.
Egly Tatiana Chacón Novoa, Port Infrastructure Technician
Diversity matters. Women need to be visible and mainstreamed in the maritime community – on board ships, and throughout the sector as a whole – and, more widely, in representations of the maritime sector such as online, in news reports, or in marketing materials such as brochures, so that when young women are surfing the web for careers, they can be inspired by the huge variety of roles and ranks available to them.
Sonia Luis Jamisse, Ship Surveyor
IMO is therefore encouraging everyone to submit photos of themselves or their female colleagues at work in a maritime context using the newly launched hashtag #MaritimeWomenPhotoShare.
IMO Secretary-General, Kitack Lim, said the photo search initiative was another step in IMO’s ongoing commitment to supporting diversity in the maritime sector.
“Seeing a wide range of images of a diverse workforce, and specifically, women at work in the maritime sector, will help redress the balance and showcase the wide range of opportunities there are for women throughout the maritime world,” says Kitack Lim.
How to get involved
To participate, use the hashtag #MaritimeWomenPhotoShare on Twitter or Instagram, or submit photos through this email: womeninmaritime@imo.org.
The guidelines:
- Make sure the image is of high resolution
- Include a job title and, if possible, name and nationality
- Participants agree for the photo to be featured in the IMO photo library which will serve as a key resource for anyone searching for images of people in the maritime sector and specifically images of women in the maritime community.
IMO’s Women in Maritime Programme
IMO’s Women in Maritime Programme has been running for more than three decades to support the participation of women in the sector, under the slogan: “Training-Visibility-Recognition”.
IMO’s gender and capacity-building programme has helped put in place an institutional framework to incorporate a gender dimension into IMO’s policies and procedures. This has supported access to maritime training and employment opportunities for women in the maritime sector.
