Women in Ocean Industries - Leadership, Sustainable Development & Maritime Security
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What does increased gender diversity, and more women at the top, have to do with leadership and sustainable development in the ocean industries? What are the facts with regards to business impact, and what are the reasons for this? Here I summarise some of the latest insights and statements from those who lead in this field.
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Women in Ocean Industries - Leadership, Sustainable Development & Maritime Security
- 1. Sofia Fürstenberg Stott Owner & Chief Advisor Fürstenberg Maritime Advisory Sustainable Ocean Summit, World Ocean Council Hotel l’Industrie, Paris November 21st 2019 Women in Ocean Industries Leadership, Sustainable Development & Maritime Security
- 2. THE OCEAN IS UNDER THREAT Collaboration across the ocean industries are needed to find and scale the necessary solutions
- 3. Blue World Perspective, Katapult Ocean, 2019 The gender gap in ocean startups
- 4. Restrictive regulations Long adaptation rates Others Conservative mindset Lack of capital for innovation Blue World Perspective, Katapult Ocean, 2019 Barriers to innovation across ocean industries
- 5. “Adding one more woman in a firm’s senior management or corporate board—while keeping the size of the board unchanged—is associated with an 8–13 basis point higher return on assets.” - Christine Lagarde, IMF, March 2019
- 6. “If banks and financial supervisors increased the share of women in senior positions, the banking sector would be more stable too.” - Christine Lagarde, IMF, March 2019 Image: https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/money
- 7. Research pointing to benefits in gender difference Women are more risk averse, reflecting a greater fear of failure, and less competitive Thicker capital buffers Especially in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services Lower proportion of non-performing loans Greater resistance to stress Diversity and complementarity of thought leads to better decision-making Banks with higher shares of women board members: Closing the Gender Gap, Era Dabla-Norris and Kalpana Kochhar, 2019
- 8. “When women are given land rights, seeds, technical training and access to markets, food productivity can rise by more than 20%” - UN Food and Agriculture Organization Can Ocean Industries learn from Agriculture?
- 9. Empowering women at grassroots Image: UNDP India/2014/Prashanth Vishwanathan
- 10. Investors need to see benefits with green “We need to show that climate investments don’t have to be too risky, and we need to promote more public-private partnerships.” - Emma Navarro, Vice President European Investment Bank, October 2019 “Encouraging innovative projects in the “blue” economy is not so much a question of more money. It is also about lifting barriers to new projects, and reducing investment risk.”
- 11. SDG 14 and the health of our planet is substantially less likely to be attained if 50% of the population who can help achieve these goals are ignored. Gender must be embedded in all efforts to protect the ocean and engage with it in a sustainable way. - Peter Thomson, UN Special Envoy for the Ocean, United Nations - Isabella Lövin, Minister for International Development Cooperation, Sweden June 2019
- 12. THANK YOU! Curious to hear more? Please connect at sofia@furstenbergmaritime.com +45 4019 0234
Editor's Notes
- Starting with the obvious! The ocean is under threat. We all know this. It’s not looking good, and while the ocean is holding so much opportunity for business, and while its resources are essential to sustain the world’s need for food, energy and minerals, the health of our ocean has not at all been prioritised to the levels needed. We now understand, that in order to solve this massive challenge, collaboration across the ocean industries are needed to find solutions, and to scale these sustainably.
- There are many people working with finding these solutions. Today there are more than 1000 ocean startups in the world, with ideas ranging from ocean health, harvest, transport, energy and new frontiers. But across these sectors, only one in ten are founded by women. The EU average for female founders and entrepreneurs is one in three. Why is this the case?
- Perhaps there is a clue here. Looking at the 5 biggest barriers across ocean industries for innovation, a conservative mindset comes top, followed by the lack of capital for innovation. Could it be, that women are avoiding taking initiatives to lead in the ocean industries, because they are faced with a conservative mindset and lack of access to capital?
- If that is the case, the industry is stupid. Because research has shown, that if you put one more woman into your management team, the business will do better. Performance improvements with up to 13% are not uncommon.
- Not only would one more woman on the board improve the performance, but research shows that that the performance would be more stable too.
- So why is this? What is it that only a woman can bring to the table? As always with statistics, you are dealing with a generalisation. But the research points to a couple of gender-specific traits: that women are more risk averse, they reflect a greater fear of failure, and they are less competitive. This doesn’t sound much good at all, does it? Well, this traits have certain positive impact: It has been shown, that particularly for high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services, more women at the top will create thicker capital buffers and improve performance of the portfolio. More so, a better diversity in the board room will evidently lead to better decision-making. (Studies have found women to be more risk averse, reflecting greater fear of failure, and less competitive. Women’s greater caution has benefits: gender-balanced corporate boards improve firm performance, especially in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services. Similarly, banks with higher shares of women board members have thicker capital buffers, a lower proportion of nonperforming loans, and greater resistance to stress, possibly because having more women in executive positions contributes to diversity and complementarity of thought, leading to better decision-making. Drawing on macroeconomic, sectoral, and firm-level data, a recent IMF study (Ostry and others 2018) suggests that men and women complement each other in the workplace in terms of different skills and perspectives, including different attitudes toward risk and collaboration.)
- If we take a wider perspective again, looking at the ocean economy next to other industries, there might be an opportunity for learning. Look at agriculture for example. When women are given land rights, seeds, technical training and access to markets, food productivity can rise by more than 20%”
- Improved gender equality is not only improving productivity. This an example from the coastal state of Odisha in India, where the local communities have been suffering from cyclones, rising sea levels and increasing water salinity, a crisis which has destroyed their farms and source of income. Now, by setting up village committees with an equal number of men and women, women became more empowered to highlighting the challenges they were faced with, and therefore in a better position to solve them, and to become innovators. In Odisha, these women have established floating gardens, micro-farms, to combat water and land salinity. Here they grow spices and vegetables, securing food access while building business and restoring the environment. (This is a photo of a floating garden in Odisha state, India, provide income and food, and help to reduce water and land salinity. In the coastal state of Odisha, India, women farmers have turned a crisis into an opportunity. Cyclones, rising sea levels and increasing water salinity have devastated their communities and turned swaths of fertile ground into wasteland. For years, these women lost income, their health and nutrition suffered, and they found themselves ever more marginalised. Women also established floating gardens to combat water and land salinity. These micro-farms are made of bamboo and a culture bed of local materials like dried water hyacinth, manure, compost and silt. On them, they grow spices and vegetables, providing food security and a source of income. These innovations came about because local development practitioners set up village committees with an equal number of local women and men as members. Women became more empowered to highlight the challenges they faced and thus were in a better position to solve them. Women play an essential role in food production; when women are given land rights, seeds, technical training and access to markets, food productivity can rise by more than 20%, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. In the fisheries sector, for example, women constitute about half the workforce. Yet they are largely concentrated in low-skilled, low-paid, seasonal jobs without labour rights protections. Men are more frequently involved in offshore and high-value fisheries according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and make up 81% of those involved in fish and aquaculture harvesting. Women, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly (90%) involved in secondary fields such as fish processing. They earn approximately 64% of men’s wages when carrying out the same work in aquaculture. Whilst women often depend on the sustainability of local resources, as men do, they frequently have a minimal voice in the governance of those resources.)
- Now, back to the banks and boardrooms. As previously stated, women in general are more risk averse and more afraid of failure. While this has proven to have benefits for making better business decisions overall, perhaps women are more prone to see investments in the blue economy as risky? Perhaps this is also part of the reason why there is such small portion of female entrepreneurs in ocean tech? This is why I think Emma Navarro is making such an important point; maybe we will only really manage to solve the ocean challenges when we manage to remove barriers for new projects and significantly reduce the investment risks.