Women at Sea: Monica Kohli OBE on Maritime Law, Leadership and the 2% Reality
- Yachting International Radio
- Feb 27
- 5 min read
There are industries where change is visible in marketing campaigns and mission statements. Then there are industries where change is measured in quiet shifts — in cadet enrolment figures, in board appointments, in who occupies the bridge at three in the morning during a North Atlantic crossing. Maritime belongs firmly to the latter.
And within that world, one figure continues to define the conversation: women at sea remain a small fraction of the global seafaring workforce. In an industry responsible for moving more than ninety percent of global trade, the percentage of women at sea remains stubbornly low. The number is often cited. Less often is it examined through the lens of lived experience.
For Monica Kohli OBE, the subject is not theoretical. It is rooted in childhood memory, sharpened by professional experience and shaped by decades working at the heart of maritime law and governance.
A Life That Began at Sea
Long before maritime law became a career, the sea was home.
Monica spent the first years of her life living aboard her father’s cargo vessel, sailing across international waters before she ever set foot in a traditional classroom. The cadence of the engine room, the choreography of port arrivals, the measured authority of bridge command — these were not romantic abstractions but the backdrop of daily existence.
There is a particular kind of clarity that comes from growing up inside a working industry. Ships were not symbols. They were infrastructure. They carried responsibility, risk and livelihood.
Yet even within that immersion, something was absent.
“You can’t see it, you can’t be it.”
There were no women at sea in command positions. No female officers whose presence signalled that the pathway was open. The absence did not arrive as exclusion; it arrived as assumption. Seafaring was presented, implicitly, as male terrain.
That absence did not push Monica away from maritime. It redirected her within it.
Choosing Maritime Law as a Strategic Pathway
When she entered law school, maritime law was not a fashionable specialism. It was niche, technical and poorly understood by many outside the sector. Yet the choice was instinctive. If the operational side of shipping had not visibly included women at sea, the regulatory and governance framework would.
International trade law and maritime law became the bridge between childhood immersion and adult profession. While classmates pursued broader legal fields, Monica’s focus remained anchored in shipping, cross-border commerce and the regulatory systems that underpin global trade.
What distinguishes this trajectory is not merely consistency, but intent. Maritime was never incidental. It was always destination.
By the late 1990s, as she entered professional practice, the maritime world she stepped into reflected long-standing hierarchies. Industry gatherings were populated by insurers, shipowners, captains and brokers. Women were present, but often not presumed to hold technical authority.
The friction was rarely overt.
“It is the very casual sexism and the very casual racism — the micro assumptions — that still exist.”
A request for tea rather than legal opinion. An assumption of hospitality rather than strategy. A polite surprise at professional seniority. None of it dramatic enough to headline. All of it persistent enough to register.
And yet, maritime is an industry that respects competence. The culture may evolve slowly, but it does not ignore performance. Monica’s response to those early assumptions was not retreat. It was professional consolidation. Expertise became the currency that altered perception.
Women at Sea and the Structural Question of Leadership
The debate around women at sea often becomes trapped in recruitment statistics. How many cadets? How many officers? How many policies signed?
But beneath those numbers lies a deeper structural issue: what does maritime leadership look like, and who is expected to embody it?
Shipping is not simply a logistics sector. It is a global operating system. Crews are multinational. Jurisdictions intersect. Insurance frameworks are layered. Regulation spans continents. In such an environment, homogeneity is operationally limiting.
Monica’s view of diversity is not framed as moral persuasion. It is framed as sector resilience.
“If you are not ready to deal with different cultures, different challenges and different ways of thinking, you are not going to progress.”
Women at sea are not symbolic additions to crew lists. They represent access to broader talent pools, different leadership styles and adaptive thinking within a complex global industry.
Her work across maritime institutions reflects that perspective. As Senior Lawyer at Gard (U.K.), she operates within the insurance framework that underpins global shipping risk. As President of WISTA U.K., she contributes to a network designed to expand opportunity and professional visibility. As Trustee of The Seafarers’ Charity and Chair of the Indian Maritime Association (UK), she works within structures that influence welfare, professional development and cross-border connectivity.
These are not peripheral roles. They sit within the core architecture of maritime governance.
Incremental Change in an Industry Built on Endurance
Maritime does not pivot overnight. Ships are designed for longevity. Contracts are structured for stability. Cultural shifts often follow the same tempo.
That reality shapes how progress around women at sea unfolds. Through WISTA U.K., initiatives such as sponsoring female cadets aim to intervene at the earliest stage of career formation. The impact is not immediate or dramatic. It is incremental — one funded officer at a time.
In an industry accustomed to measuring cargo in thousands of tonnes and voyages in weeks, incrementalism may appear modest. But structural change rarely arrives as spectacle. It arrives as accumulation.
The presence of one additional woman at sea alters crew dynamics. The presence of several alters expectation. Over time, expectation reshapes culture.
The Weight of Visibility
Senior leadership carries an unspoken dual responsibility for women in maritime. There is the professional role — lawyer, executive, trustee. And there is the representational role — visible proof that progression is possible.
That second layer is rarely formally acknowledged, yet it exists. Women who break into senior maritime roles often find themselves treated as ambassadors, whether they seek that designation or not.
Monica articulates the aspiration not as dominance, but normalisation.
“I would like to see a place where women are as good — or as bad — as the next man.”
Parity will not be achieved when women are exceptional anomalies. It will be achieved when their presence requires no explanation.
Recognition, including her appointment as OBE, sits within that broader narrative. It signals institutional acknowledgement of contribution. Yet recognition alone does not move percentages. Policy, access and sustained visibility do.
Beyond the Statistic
The figure around women at sea remains small. But it is not static. Across regions including India, parts of Africa and Turkey, efforts to expand maritime education and cadet pathways are gradually shifting entry points.
Change in maritime is rarely linear. It arrives through regulation, advocacy, economic necessity and generational turnover. What defines the present moment is not whether the industry recognises the imbalance, but whether it accelerates correction.
Women at sea represent more than representation. They represent the untapped capacity of an industry that cannot afford to narrow its talent pipeline in a world of increasing operational complexity.
Maritime has always been global. The leadership that governs it must reflect that reality.
The question is not whether women belong at sea. That question has already been answered by those who have stepped onboard.
The question is how quickly the industry is prepared to ensure that stepping onboard no longer feels exceptional.
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