Educating Future Female Seafarers in the Maritime College from the Perspective of Masculinity

Abstract

Recently, the Maritime Bureau and Seafarers Policy Division of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism have been working to promote gender equality in the seafarer industry. Moreover, in 2017, the “Committee on the Promotion of Female Seafarers’ Activities from a Female Experts’ Perspective” was launched to discuss the issue. I participated in this committee as one of three academic experts. The committee has reported that the percentage of female seafarers in the Japanese shipping industry is only 2%, and less than 10% of shipping companies have shown a positive attitude toward the employment of female seafarers, indicating that the employment of female seafarers is not being promoted. The purpose of this study is to train female students in maritime colleges to be able to work as seafarers with leadership skills in the future using “masculinity” as a keyword.