Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S is considering hiring the first female chief financial officer in the company, as part of its overall efforts to enable women participation in the maritime sector and especially in top management.
As informed, the company’s former CFO, Jakob Stausholm, left last month leaving Maersk’s management team with five men. Now the company has several candidates for this place, including a woman, which could cover the gender gap and boost diversity within the organization.
Several organizations, unions and companies have set the ground in the last decade for creating a greater awareness and sensitize towards acceptance of women in key business positions. Shipping specifically seems to be by far a male-dominated sector over the years, even when it comes to global conglomerates as Maersk, headquartered in Denmark which is known for gender equality in the workforce.
Some shipping companies have tried to promote women in leading shipping positions in the last months:
- In 1 April 2017, Japanese NYK announced that a deck officer named Tomoko Konishi became the first woman in the company’s 132-year history to be promoted to the rank of captain.
- In late August, Celebrity Cruises announced partnership with the Regional Maritime University in Ghana, marking the first time in cruise industry history, in order female bridge officers to be openly recruited from a West African country, through a new Celebrity-RMU Cadet Program.
- In early March 2018, Nicole Langosch was appointed as AIDA’s first female captain, in the vessel AIDAsol. Currently, AIDA Cruises employs 14 female nautical officers aboard its fleet.
