Female students’ perspective for maritime career

The paper presents the outcome of the research that has been completed recently at the Faculty of Navigation (FoN); Maritime University of Szczecin, Poland. The aim of the research is to show the maritime society what female students – future maritime women – think about studying the navigation and future work at sea. The research has been done by a group of female students – prospective seafarers. It is based on a questionnaire directed to fellow female students which contains 29 questions concerning the motivation for commencing the study in the field of maritime navigation, aspirations, fears and obstacles faced by female seafarers related to present study,internship onboard seagoing ships and future work. 128 female students responded to the questionnaire. The answers have been gathered into groups of interest. The findings are presented in terms of diagrams and comments. The paper contains valuable information that may be used by maritime universities, ship owners and other potential employers of maritime female students – in particular maritime policy makers. One of the interesting findings is that 84% of the female students declare they would choose the same field of study having experience (including seagoing intership) gained so far. The paper presents also the change of the number of female students at FoN in the last 10 years. It is the sign of relatively high interest of young women in maritime navigation in Poland – the country that is one of the biggest suppliers of officers for seagoing ships.