Assessing the Impact of Skills-Development Initiatives on Women’s Career Resilience in Tanzania’s Maritime Sector

Women hold less than 2 % of seafaring roles worldwide and an even smaller share in Tanzania, largely because access to technical training remains gender-skewed. Guided by Social Learning and Transformational Leadership theories, this mixed-methods study assesses how mentor-supported skills-development initiatives influence women’s career resilience at the WOMESA hub in Dar es Salaam. Survey data from 65 female maritime professionals and 18 in-depth interviews were analysed with SPSS v28 and NVivo 14. Skills development correlated strongly with resilience (r = .71, p < .01) and retained a significant independent effect in a hierarchical regression (β = .31), even after networking and psychosocial support were controlled, lifting explained variance to 67 %. Qualitative themes “tool-kit empowerment,” “certification acceleration,” and “confidence transference” revealed that short courses, mentor-brokered sponsorships, and crisis-shadowing collectively boost self-efficacy. However, resource bottlenecks (“male-first” sponsorship norms, limited simulator slots) temper these gains. The findings show that equitably funded, mentor-guided training is catalytic for women’s adaptability and advancement, offering actionable guidance for maritime policy makers and organizations aiming to build an inclusive, resilient Blue-Economy workforce.