IOPC Funds celebrates the International Day for Women in Maritime, 2023

The IOPC Funds is proud to support International Day for Women in Maritime today, 18 May 2023.  Established and championed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) the focus for this year’s event is ‘Mobilizing networks for gender equality.  A global Conference of the eight regional Women in Maritime Associations will take place under the same theme at the IMO Headquarters on 18 and 19 May 2023. The IOPC Funds is looking forward to being represented at that event and to learning from the speakers how it can access and, where relevant, contribute to such networks.

The IMO has continued to promote and develop concrete initiatives on empowering women and advancing gender equality at the Organization and in the wider maritime community. Last year, the IOPC Funds expressed its commitment to establishing its own internal goals for the future benefit of the organisation and it has been working towards ensuring wider representation of women as far as possible across the organisation, not just within the Secretariat during 2022 and 2023.

The Director of the IOPC Funds, Gaute Sivertsen, remains committed to ensuring a culture of diversity and equality is established and maintained within the organisation.  In particular, he takes this opportunity to again encourage Member States to increase female representation within their delegations to IOPC Funds meetings. This not only ensures that a wider variety of perspectives are taken into account during the discussions of the governing bodies, but also provides a more diverse choice of candidates for positions within the organisation, including Chairs of the various governing bodies.

The IOPC Funds are proud to have 16 highly qualified, trained and experienced women working within the Funds’ Secretariat of 24 persons, several holding senior roles within the organisation.  They are also pleased to have welcomed a number of other women to key positions in other areas of the organisation, including within the governing bodies, the Audit Body and the Investment Advisory Body in recent years.

In the IOPC Funds’ 2022 Annual Report, we took the opportunity to provide an insight into the experiences and challenges faced by a number of those women.  We asked them to reflect on their experience working with the IOPC Funds and in the wider maritime community. They were invited to share the most important lessons of their careers and words of wisdom that they would give to young people starting work in the maritime world. The full feature can be read here.