Women in maritime career: Are they still discriminated?

Abstract

This research embarks on a journey to explore three antecedents of career theory: career regret, career aspirations, and work meaningfulness, and their intricate relationship with gender discrimination in a male-dominated workplace, specifically the maritime industry. This study is firmly rooted in self-determination theory, which posits that three innate psychological needs–competence, autonomy, and relatedness–guide individuals to grow and change. This study focuses on the career pendulum of women seafarers, a critical area that aims to draw attention to and assist career scholars and practitioners in comprehending, predicting, and facilitating a broader context of career literature's subjective outcomes through the lens of women employees in a male-dominated workplace. A conceptual model is unveiled, incorporating the negative aspects of career theory, namely gender discrimination and career regret. Both of these significantly and negatively affect job meaningfulness, and career regret has a mediation role in gender discrimination and job meaningfulness; at the same time, career aspirations moderate the relationship between career regret and job meaningfulness. © 2026 Elsevier Ltd.