A comparative study of the perspectives of men and women in maritime on gender issue

Maritime is a male dominated sector and women working in this sector experience some hardships because of the special working conditions and the prejudice against them. There is an ongoing ERASMUS Project aiming to help women overcome the hardships they encounter in the sector. In the framework of the project, a survey which consists of 50 questions was prepared and applied to both men and women working in maritime. While evaluating the responses it was seen that with some questions there is an agreement between the responses given by men and women, while there is a big discrepancy in some others. In this study, only the questions with a discrepancy of over 20% in the responses for the same choice (Yes or No) are taken into consideration with an eye to evaluate the perception of various situations by different genders. Almost all of these questions are related to the reactions of men to the behaviors of women on board or how the presence of women on board is perceived by men. Then, what the reasons for these negative reactions may be and what can be done to prevent them are looked into.