The maritime professions have been traditionally considered as the realm of men. According to the International Transport Workers' Federation, women make up only an estimated 2% of the world's maritime workforce. Women seafarers work mainly in the cruise and ferries sector, often for flags of convenience vessels. They are among the worst paid and least protected of jobs at sea. In both the shipping industry and the maritime security and defence domain, due to the former hardships of a life at sea, the presence of women was looked at as inappropriate. Nowadays, due to the development of technology, women acquired and maintain a permanent presence in the maritime industry. Yet, their numbers have not paralleled the increasing proportion of women in other formerly male-dominated fields, especially medicine and law. Thus, the larger access of female officers and managers in the maritime industry and defence is impeded by many obstructions, starting with occupational culture throughout Europe and finishing with the labour market acceptance. In order to strengthen the gender equality and equity in the maritime professions, the consortium comprising the "Piri Reis" University (TR), the "Mircea cel Batran" Naval Academy (RO), the Polish Naval Academy (PL) and the "Nikola Y. Vaptsarov" Naval Academy (BG) addresses the project called "Maritime Educational Network to Orient and Retain Women for Efficient Seagoing Services", acronym MENTORESS. The partner universities of this Action have planned a three-folded educational design. First goal is to conduct pilot studies involving female cadets to equip them with the necessary skills to overcome the hardships a female seafarer is likely to encounter in the working environment. The second branch of the Project consists of research works in the field of maritime leadership which will be presented during the multiplier events and finally collected together in a so-called Charter of Gender Equity for Maritime Professionals. Based on the educational requirements extracted after the survey and the research results the partners will develop a common syllabus - "Gender Identity Management and Leadership in Maritime Professions" - at the bachelor degree level - for the female cadets to prepare them for their maritime professions, both civilian and military. The programme will consist of identical topics and case studies with a special emphasis on participative leadership and it will have a workload of 4-6 ECTS. This common syllabus is to be inserted by the partners in the second semester of the second year or the first/second semester of the third year of study (from a total of four years). The themes included will also be identical as learning objectives, learning tasks, evaluation procedures and bibliography. For the national education of each partner, the syllabus will be edited in the national language, but it will be mere translations of the same programme developed by the partners in English language. The programme in English will be fully suitable to the Erasmus+ incoming students and teachers from the 4 partner institutions because in terms of learning outcomes there will be no differences between the home and host university, so recognition and competencies will be entirely equivalent. This innovative competencies' compatibility will eventually have a great impact on the more predictable professional performance of the European maritime officers trained in 4 EU member or partner countries that sum up around 140 million people.
MENTORESS is a project which aims to increase the awareness of women in maritime, esp. seafarer women, to develop their situation in maritime, to give them the place they deserve in the sector and to furnish them with skills to cope with the problems they face. The objective of this project is to develop, test and implement an identical 1- semester extracurricular programme to give necessary leadership and intercultural communication skills to female cadets. With an eye to do this, it intends to design a syllabus and to import it to the Leadership and Management curriculum of maritime faculties to help prospective female staff cope with the hardships they are likely to encounter in seagoing services and maritime jobs and to make them realize themselves to the full extent. It also aims to increase the number of women in maritime jobs and, by this way, to raise awareness for the presence of women on-board the ships, to create a women-friendly atmosphere which requires elaborate behaviours and language, to encourage appropriate behaviour among personnel and to foster good camaraderie. It will also provide the participants with awareness and cultural considerations with regard to gender. The project which was carried out by four partner countries, which are Turkey, Bulgaria, Poland and Romania, addressed all the stakeholders in the maritime sector, including students and instructors from not only maritime schools but also from other higher education institutions including naval academies, representatives from shipping companies, maritime & port authorities, maritime industry or naval defense system and profit and non-profit organizations in the sector. It addressed a total of more than 3000 people. There took place 4 multiplier events in the project. Each included a workshop related to the main theme of the event. In addition to the multiplier events, the project had four Learning/Teaching/ Training Activities which were in parallel with the main theme of the preceding multiplier event. They were planned as 2 intensive study programmes and 2 joint staff training sessions. They brought added value to the main objective - the educational network - by providing the opportunity to test and evaluate the developed "Gender Identity Management and Leadership in Maritime Professions" common syllabus. All intellectual outputs, multiplier events, intensive study programmes and short-term joint staff training events in the scope of the project were realized successfully. A Charter which consisted of the papers prepared within the frame of the project was prepared. The papers in the Charter analyzed multi-dimensional aspects of women integration in the maritime professions. The charter revealed measures needed to bridge the gender gap in order to ease the access of female officers and managers onto the maritime labour market and naval defence occupations. Apart from the Charter, the partners developed the "Gender Identity Management and Leadership in Maritime Professions" common syllabus which was based on the educational requirements extracted from the survey. The educational management of the syllabus – prerequisites, learning objectives, overall workload (lectures, seminars, projects, individual study), assessment of learning outcomes and references were jointly agreed upon. Last but not least of the results is MENTORESS virtual network, which is hosted by MARPLAT, a product of another European funded project. It has established an efficient media for communication within the partners and for the dissemination of the project’s results. It has also included the educational references for the syllabus designed. Moreover, the virtual network allows on-line course for Gender Identity Management and Leadership in Maritime Professions. The project has impacts on participants, participating organizations, target groups and stakeholders at local, regional, national and international levels. The first impact is increasing diversity awareness and awareness about the women in the maritime professions. The impact has already been stated positively by relevant stakeholders who attended the activities and reported that they had effectively benefited from them. The Project is foreseen to have a great impact on the equal chance for women to be employed in the sector. On the completion of the project and after making the outcome available to all the parties concerned, more women are expected to be encouraged to take part in the maritime sector and they will have the necessary intellectual background to cope with the problems they are likely to encounter. This will help the number of women in the maritime increase in time, and all maritime sector will benefit from the increase in the workforce, for they will have the chance to select the most suitable candidates for the vacant positions. This will eventually give way to an increase in the welfare of society.