International Women’s Day 2023: MSC Takes Steps to Embrace Equity in Shipping

GENEVA : To mark International Women’s Day 2023, MSC is highlighting some of its gender-inclusive initiatives as an advocate for women’s empowerment in shipping.

MSC teams around the world have been celebrating International Women’s Day 2023 (IWD 2023) — a day to recognise the achievements of women, raise awareness of and to take actions to accelerate gender equality.

While maritime is traditionally a male-dominated industry, MSC is proud to be part of the global movement to accelerate gender parity by establishing internal programmes and joining wider initiatives to promote equity and inclusion. Below are three examples of our recent and upcoming activities.

Advancing Gender Parity at MSC and in Shipping

• We run a company-wide women’s mentoring programme to promote women’s career advancement and leadership skills. In 2022, a total of 24 women received mentoring from senior female leaders within MSC. After this successful pilot, the programme is now going from strength-to-strength with ten more mentoring groups planned for 2023, training a further 60 women.

• So far, MSC in around 30 countries has signed up for the Women Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a global initiative established by UN Women and the UN Global Compact. The WEPs provide guidance to businesses on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community. MSC is pleased to update that there are a further 60 action plans in place which will benefit our people and enrich our organization.

• Throughout 2023 we will focus on embedding the notion of ‘equity’ in the workplace to create true inclusion and belonging. In support of IWD 2023’s global theme of #EmbraceEquity, senior people across our organization have been demonstrating our commitment to creating a workplace culture driven by equity.