Navigating Tokenism: Peer Dynamics, Gendered Hostility, and Career Longevity among Taiwanese Women Seafarers

Abstract

Despite growing inclusion discourses, seafaring remains a bastion of hegemonic masculinity, with women comprising under 2% of the global workforce. This article conceptualizes the cargo ship as a total institution where heteropatriarchal structures and women's professional agency continually collide. Drawing on Feminist Standpoint Theory, the study centres the situated knowledges of Taiwanese women seafarers. Employing a multi-modal qualitative design - comprising the Taiwan Women Seafarers Workshop and Forum alongside ten days of ethnographic observation aboard a 50,089 DWT product tanker - this research interrogates how everyday gendered hostilities are systematically masked by a technical, gender-neutral fa & ccedil;ade. Findings show that women negotiate token status through meticulous boundary work and invisible affective labour, while exclusion from male 'huddles' is partially offset by 'digital resilience', or transnational online mentoring networks. The analysis further reveals how the tension between professional identity and domestic expectations creates a profound structural role-identity conflict, underscoring the urgent need to move from gender-blind regulation toward gender-transformative policy in the era of Maritime 4.0.