Beyond business as usual: the role of women professionals in maritime clusters

This paper examines the relevance of gender with respect to the concept of maritime clusters. Though the concept of maritime clusters has gained popularity from a strategic economic development perspective in increasing the overall efficiency of the industry through innovation, maritime clusters have rarely been discussed in relation to the empowerment of women in the maritime sector. Women’s participation in the maritime industry has been reported to be fairly limited in many parts of the world and both horizontal and vertical segregations can still be observed even today. This paper demonstrates a limitation in the existing literature in respect of acknowledging the role played by maritime women professionals in operationalizing the concept of maritime clusters. As such, to facilitate mainstreaming of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) 5 (gender equality) into national maritime plans, Rapid Integrated Assessment (RIA) is used as a tool to examine women professionals’ contributions to maritime clusters. Four stages of RIA offer steps towards defining a roadmap for a country to implement the SDGs. Foreseeing the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 as well as emerging business models in the maritime industry, gender equality is an opportunity to go beyond business as usual and advance sustainable development in the maritime sector.