A few years ago, American Club deputy chief operating officer Dorothea Ioannou walked into a meeting of International Group of P&I Clubs general managers to find she was the only woman among the 40 attendees.
With a long career in protection and indemnity, she has got used to finding herself in situations where women are outnumbered by men.
But, as one of the most senior women in P&I management, she is also in a position to influence on recruitment.
One of her roles is managing director of the Hellas office of Shipowners Claims Bureau — managers of American Club — in Piraeus, where she has turned the tables on the traditional gender balance in the industry.
There are 12 women working at the Greek outpost, covering all the senior positions, and three men.
“Naturally, I’m going to rely on my network, so that also played a role,” Ioannou said of her recruitment policy. “I did not particularly look for women. But most of the time, when we were looking to recruit, the best candidates were women, and that is how it developed.”
At Ioannou’s last count, the mutual had achieved a global gender balance and a diverse ethnic mix.
“I like to know where we stand and we are about 50/50 on our global staff with 47% female and 53% male, I think that is pretty good in this market. And when you look at non-white, we are about 30% globally, and that is pretty impressive as well.”
But Ioannou says the way to develop a better gender balance is simply to have a more open mind when it comes to recruitment.
Unconscious bias
“We don’t have quotas and we don’t have targets,” she said. “I think it has generally to do with, and I’m not sure if this is safe to say, but I’m going to say it: I think it has to do with our attitude and our approach, which has less unconscious bias. I don’t think anyone is doing anything on purpose but there is just less unconscious bias here,” she said.
Also, with the mutual headquartered in the cultural melting pot of New York, American Club is advantaged by having a diverse pool of ethnicity to call on.
Changing for the better
There are signs that things are changing for the better in the world of P&I. American Club chief executive Joe Hughes thinks back to his early days in P&I in the 1970s when clubs were run “entirely by Oxbridge [Oxford and Cambridge University graduates] ex-barristers”, he said.
- Gard has set a target of achieving 50% gender balance by 2025 at management, team leader and professional levels.
- Skuld has achieved 43% female representation at Norwegian board level, and the mutual’s total gender balance is 51% in favour of women.
For the American Club, it has followed the American motto of “E Pluribus Unum”, or one from many, which espouses the principle of equality of opportunity for people from ethnic backgrounds.
“Traditionally these types of [P&I] jobs were held by white men but in the US it developed differently. With the American Club going international, our approach has always been to invest in the community within which you exist and then, with the general attitude of not having that unconscious bias, to look for the best candidates,” Hughes said.
Thinking back to the International Group meeting where Ioannou was the only women, she has been pleased to see more female representation at recent gatherings. She thinks the P&I industry is making progress on diversity.
On the agenda
Other P&I clubs have diversity on the agenda even if they have not quite managed to reach the levels seen in the Shipowners Claims Bureau Hellas office.
Gard, for one, has set a target of achieving a 50% gender balance by 2025 at management, team leader and professional levels.
According to its latest sustainability report it has already surpassed those levels in the team leader and professional levels. It also has a 40% target in 2025 for senior vice president, vice president and managing director levels.
Skuld has achieved 43% female representation at Norwegian board level, and the mutual’s total gender balance is 51% in favour of women.
The Oslo-based mutual has also improved its SHE Index score, which assess a company’s gender policy, year on year since 2019.
Both clubs monitor wage differentials closely, as do the likes of North P&I Club, the UK P&I Club and Britannia P&I.
