A group of organisations within the maritime industry are collaborating on a project to highlight the activities undertaken by women in shipping over the past few centuries.
The ‘Rewriting women into maritime history’ project will collate the material that is spread across archives beginning within those in the City of London, and then expanding to the UK & Ireland, and internationally so that accounts of women in the shipping industry can be identified and placed in the public domain for the first time.
Led by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Heritage and Education Centre (LRF HEC), the collaboration currently involves Lloyd’s List, International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the Nautical Institute, the Women in Shipping and Trade Association (WISTA UK), Nautilus International and Preston Turnbull LLP. It is also being supported by The International Congress of Maritime Museums (ICMM), The National Maritime Museum, the University of Exeter and The British Commission for Maritime History (BCMH).
Other interested parties are invited to join the initiative, which will run over several years.
The extensive research and interpretation project will provide plenty of opportunities for organisations to be involved in outreach activities to engage a global audience.
A key theme of the project is diversity, equality and inclusion. Through ensuring that forgotten voices are heard, stories generated by the project can highlight the many opportunities presented by a maritime career.
Louise Sanger, the Head of Research, Interpretation and Engagement at LRF HEC who is leading the research project said:
Women in maritime history is an area of growing research but there is still work to be done. Apart from a few notable exceptions, women have largely been excluded from the maritime history narrative
In addition, Philippa Charlton, Chief Marketing Officer at Lloyd’s Register, mentioned that “women have always been involved in the maritime industry but there is limited publicly available evidence of their engagement in shipping from the 1800s and even earlier, until the present day.”
Women have long been a part of our industry and it is time that this is recognised
stated
Natalie Shaw MBE, ICS Director Employment Affairs.
A recent survey by DNV highlighted that a growing number of companies are beginning to put Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) on the corporate agenda. They tend to agree that a diverse and inclusive company is better performing, yet few see D&I as business critical.
However, companies integrating D&I into their business model stand to gain significant performance benefits.
