Legal Principles and Guarantees of Realisation of Gender Equality in the Labour and Social Sphere

An employment of women -seafarers and related gender aspects are important in future development of modern shipping. At the same time, specification of maritime shipping imposes traditionally low proportion of women in relation to the total number of qualified seafarers on ships. Equality issues in maritime shipping are not only limited to equality between women and men, but also encompasses situations with vessel's operation issues and related working relationship. The purpose of this article is to define the tasks and trends of international legal provision of gender equality's improvement in practice plane on the basis of international law and current Ukraine's legislation, scientific developments, domestic and foreign experience. The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the basic international legal instruments and agreements containing standards of equality between women and men offer member states a policy of eliminating discrimination and requiring the introduction of a range of antidiscrimination measures. International organizations such as the IMO and the ILO pay great attention to the importance of gender equality issues on merchant ships. One of the ILO's fundamental international standard is gender equality, which must be ensured by both of the state and the social partners, such as workers' and employers' organizations. Hence, ILO approaches in ensuring gender equality are very important in maritime shipping. Conducted research on gender equality, including equality between men and women in the merchant shipping industry, demonstrates a positive correlation in rights and achievements for women, in social, economic and political areas.