WHILE many of the exhibitors were promoting new, clean hybrid engines, shipping minister Nusrat Ghani had come to talk about girl power when she opened a major marine event in Southampton.

The minister launched Seawork 2018 at Mayflower Park yesterday and unveiled her department’s mission to get more women into the maritime sector.

While the belief that it’s bad luck to have a woman aboard may have been thrown overboard long ago, women still make up only three per cent of ships’ officers and are under-represented in the boardrooms of maritime companies.

Ms Ghani urged companies to sign up to the Women in Maritime Pledge.

Those that do will be invited to engage with the detailed development of the Women in Maritime Charter, due to be launched in the autumn of 2018.

“We need to attract skilled and capable women and have a higher proportion of women in positions of influence.”

“Diversity in management positions means better decisions.”

Ms Ghani told the Echo that although she wanted more women in the maritime world, she was not in favour of setting targets or quotas.

She is the minister for the Year of Engineering which was promoting engineering careers, and she said that this overlapped with the work of the Women in Maritime Taskforce as well as addressing skills shortages.

The minister met Martin Cox and Lauren Mudliar of Southampton-based AMI marine, which make bridge navigation equipment including voyage data recorders – the ship’s equivalent of an aeroplane’s black box.

The AMI pair explained that their company had a 50-50 split of men and women in their 12 management positions.

Mr Cox said: “Being the father of two daughters, I want girl power to be the way of the world.”

Tuesday may have been the first day of Seawork proper but a spin-off event, Speed@Seawork, focusing on fast vessels used for military, security and search and rescue operations, began on Monday.

More than 100 delegates took part in a floating conference aboard Blue Funnel’s Ocean Scene as it crossed the Solent before watching eight new fast boats being put through their paces off Cowes.

Seawork, which runs until Thursday, is the only trade exhibition of its kind to feature floating exhibits. It is set to bring 7,000 visitors to the city from all parts of the world to see more than 600 exhibitors promoting 10,00 products.