Above: Tara Gaulton, an intern at the Ocean Careers Immersion Program, tours The Calvert.
The Canadian Women in Ocean Industries Leadership (CWOIL) believes that Canada’s ocean sector, which is faced with labour shortages and increased attention as Canada tries to promote its “Blue Economy,” provides a great opportunity for women to enter the traditionally male-dominated sector.
CWOIL is an organization that seeks to foster diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in Canada’s ocean industries, which depending on the sector has a participation rate of those that identify as female as low as two per cent and no higher than 15 per cent.
The organization believes that Canada can play a leading role in an inclusive marine sector for women, people in the LGBTQ community, disabled people, Indigenous people and racialized groups.
CWOIL conducted multiple consultations with affected groups to learn more about the hurdles people face entering marine industries.
Cathy Hogan, the executive director of OceansAdvance and a core team member of CWOIL, says the barriers women face in the industry are numerous.
“I hate to say this because it sounds horrible, but it’s kind of the old boys club,” said Hogan. “Women, we’re not really meant to be at sea. Things still really aren’t set up to accommodate women.”
Among these barriers are a traditionally male-dominated work environment, which has resulted in a lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) designed for women and lifestyles at sea not always being comfortable for women. Alongside societal barriers, CWOIL believes many in the oceans sector have the intention of hiring with diversity in mind but aren’t aware of the best way to recruit, train and retain people from under-represented communities.
A number of respondents during the CWOIL consultations also noted that certain jobs in the sector are not currently applicable to those raising a family.
“If you’re looking to go as an observer or you want to work on a fishing vessel and so on, they’re at sea for extended periods of time. Women are often still the main caregivers for children,” said Hogan.
“We start out with great expectations, in the Marine Institute in particular and the Nova Scotia Community College. They’re all turning out a number of young women in various programs throughout… but a lot of women end up dropping out of the sector because they don’t have the flexibility of being able to leave home for three weeks at a time.”
Another issue CWOIL has encountered is that many young women simply aren’t aware of the employment prospects in the oceans sector.
Hogan says that many people might have a simplistic view of the sector, and not see the various career paths available besides harvesting.
“This is not the fisheries that your father did 60 years ago. Not that there’s anything in the world wrong with the fisheries, but it’s a whole much more advanced sector, and whole lot more to it from a science perspective,” said Hogan.
CWOIL has put a National Action Plan in place to combat the issues they’ve found, which are separated into the categories of operations, diversity champions, empowering ocean enterprise, inspiring careers and celebrating DEI best practices and leadership. Each category is separated into a three-year outline.
In its first year, among other goals, CWOIL seeks to establish a national integrated funding program, collect and report on data to do with gender issues in Canada’s oceans sector, establish a DEI task force, host a conference on DEI, commit finances for DEI among small and medium-sized enterprises, offer workplace assessments to willing organizations and establish scholarships to support leadership development for women in the sector.
Some long-term goals set by CWOIL include developing an oceans-focused career portal, funding national industry associations to support DEI, developing a series of scholarships to support business skill professional support programs for advancing mid-managers and raising awareness of existing diversity resources through an online portal.
“There’s just not enough people in the sector, period,” said Hogan. “So, let’s do two things. Let’s increase the number of women that are in the sector, and under-represented groups, and let’s help solve the problems that we have with the lack of talent in the sector and how our top ocean tech companies are all suffering from a lack of HQP — highly qualified people. They’re out there, I think, they’re just not looking in the right place.”
CWOIL is set to host a conference at the Delta Hotel in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador from May 9–11, 2023. The newfound organization hopes that this inaugural conference can get the ball rolling on its future goals.
The conference will feature topics such as encouraging women company founders in the oceans sector, expanding the talent pool in the sector, expanding female participation in executive boards, exploring the barriers women still face in becoming leaders in their respective fields and workforce development for the future. The conference will also host a series of speakers like Victoria Belbin, the CEO of the Atlantic Canada Aerospace and Defence Association and Don Grant, the Executive Director of the Ocean Startup Project.
“I think we can be a world leader. Not overnight, but I think that Canada can make a difference,” said Hogan. “I see people looking to us in the future for, ‘How did you do that, and how did it work?’ And I also think that our plan overall is one that can probably be used as an example in other sectors, whether that’s agriculture or mining or wherever that happens to be.”
More information on CWOIL’s inaugural conference and its action plan can be found at www.cwoil.ca.
