As part of its efforts to encourage more women in the maritime sector, the IMO supported a training course aimed at female officials from maritime and port authorities. A total of 25 women from 17 developing countries took part in the two-week “Women in Port Management” course, hosted in Le Havre, France, on 24 June – 5 July.
The course covered lectures on port management, port security, marine environment, facilitation of maritime traffic, marketing, port logistics and other topics.
Visits were organized to the Port of Le Havre and the Port of Rouen, giving participants the chance to experience for themselves the day-to-day operations of a port, with a view to applying this knowledge back in their respective countries.
The port management course was delivered through IMO’s Women in Maritime programme, supported by the Ministry of Transport of the People’s Republic of China and in partnership with the Port Institute for Education and Research (IPER) and the Le Havre Port Authority.
It comes as part of IMO’s ongoing and increasing efforts to support the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
IMO has recently shed its efforts to raise awareness on the issue, with the decision to set ‘Empowerment of women in the maritime sector’ as the theme of World Maritime day for this year, while it has supported several trainings for women in port management, over the recent months.
This is the 15th training event of its kind. So far, 333 women have received training under this activity.
Demand for the course has continued to grow substantially over the past years.
In the same context, IAPH announced in April the allocation of a budget fund of USD 10,000 to develop a Women in Ports Mentoring Program designed to attract, empower and retain female talent in the industry.
The program seeks to empower women port professionals by linking them to both female and male expert mentors to expand their knowledge and prepare them to take up operational roles in the Smart Ports of the future.
This is the best way to support women’s from developing countries because it is difficult for them selves to afford some costs, even though we wish to learn more.