Category Archives: Americas

Genderaquafish.org: 2014 year in review

Posted on January 3, 2015 | Leave a comment
GAF5 attendees on opening day, 13 November 2014, Lucknow, India

GAF5 attendees on opening day, 13 November 2014, Lucknow, India

Our Genderaquafish.org website continued to grow in popularity in 2014, with visits to the site increasing by 9% over the 2013 level, reaching 18,454 visits from people in at least 162 countries, covering all regions. Our top 5 countries for visitors were: India (4,734), USA (2,528), Philippines (941), Malaysia (831), UK (696).

Genderaquafish.org visitors came from all regions and most countries of the world.

Genderaquafish.org visitors came from all regions and most countries of the world.

2014 stats by region

Read the short annual report provided by WordPress, our wonderful site host: https://genderaquafish.org/2014/annual-report/

REGIONS

Posts from Asia and Africa were the most prevalent. We also produced posts covering Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. In addition, the gender dimensions of several global documents and events were highlighted, such as the Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines and the fish and food security report of the High Level Panel of Experts advising the UN Committee on Food Security.

PUBLICATIONS

We released the second Special Issue of the Asian Fisheries Science journal (27S), containing papers and the Guest Editorial from our 2013 4th Global Symposium on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries (GAF4).

PEOPLE

Many of our posts highlighted people active in progressing gender equality in the aquaculture and fisheries sectors (see posts on people). In March, we reported with concern the loss aboard flight MH370 of Dr Chandrika Sharma, the Executive Secretary of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, and a driving force in the Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines.

2014 was a big year for Dr Nikita Gopal, who not only was chief editor for the GAF4 Special Issue but also led the programme and operations for GAF5.

THEMES

Aquaculture, organizations, climate change and development were recurring themes in our posts.

EVENTS

Of several 2014 events that included gender sessions, we covered GAF5 (5th Global Symposium on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries) in most depth. We still hope to also add some information on other 2014 events, especially the 2014 Adelaide World Aquaculture Society conference Women’s Contributions to Aquaculture session and the gender papers of the 2014 IIFET conference in Brisbane.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Our strength on various social media continued to grow slowly, thanks to contributions from many regular friends and readers, and special help from Piyashi DebRoy and Danika Kleiber (our Google Group leaders), Chloe English for assistance on Twitter during GAF5 (@Genderaquafish). Our Facebook page continued to attract good and increasing traffic.

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE FOR 2015?

We intend to follow-up on the action items from our GAF5 networks meeting in Lucknow in November. This work includes some great innovations for this website. Stay tuned!

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Asia, Chandrika Sharma, Europe, GAF4, GAF5, Global, Nikita Gopal, Organisations and People, People, Regional

Yemaya August issue highlights Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines

Posted on October 6, 2014 | 2 comments

Usha Tai in a discussion with representatives of fi shworkers organization at a meeting organized by ICSF. Photo: Yemaya Aug 2014

The August 2014 issue of Yemaya, the newsletter on gender and fisheries of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) is full of interesting articles. It highlights the gender implications of the new Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines, plus articles on Japan, India and The Gambia. Download the issue at this link.

Articles
  • Editorial: Nilanjana Biswas
  • Japan: Migrant hands, local profits by Kumi Soejims & Katia Frangoudes
  • Profile: “I love fishing at all times”— Jeannette Naranjo (Costa Rica) by Vivienne Solis Rivera
  • The Gambia: Trading away food security by Nilanjana Biswas
  • India: Remembering Usha Tamore by Shuddhawati S Peke
  • Milestones: The Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines by Ramya Rajagopalan
  • Japan: Sea, people and life by Katia Frangoudes & Annie Castaldo
  • What’s New Webby? GAF5 by Ramya Rajagopalanby
  • India: A question of identity (for seaweed collectors) by Sumana Narayanan
  • Q & A: Carmen, Honduras by Norman Flores and
    Vivienne Solis Rivera
  • Yemaya Mama: cartoon
  • Yemaya Recommends: Standards for collecting sex disaggregated data for gender analysis:  A guide for CGIAR researchers by Caitlin Kieran & Cheryl Doss

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Asia, Costa Rica, Fish post-harvest, Fisheries, GAF5, Gambia, Gender, Global, Honduras, India, Japan, Men, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, The Gambia, Women

Report recommends integrating fish into food security and nutrition

Posted on June 5, 2014 | 3 comments


HLPE-Report-7_Cover-smA new report, Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture for Food Security and Nutrition, has provided probably “the most comprehensive recent attempt to review and synthesize the current knowledge” said Dr Christophe Béné. Dr Béné, of the Institute of Development Studies, chaired the team of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security that produced the report.

The report recommends that fish need to be fully integrated into all aspects of food security and nutrition policies and programmes. It pays special attention to all dimensions of food security and nutrition and promotes small-scale production and local arrangements, as local markets, e.g. for procuring school meals, and other policy tools, including nutrition education and gender equality.

The report is dedicated to Chandrika Sharma who was one of the peer reviewers of the report.

HLPE Team for fish, food security and nutrition report. Left to right: Gro-Ingunn Hemre, Modadugu V. Gupta, Moenieba Isaacs, Chris Béné, Meryl Williams, Ningsheng Yang and Vincent Gitz (Secretary)

HLPE Team for fish, food security and nutrition report. Left to right: Gro-Ingunn Hemre, Modadugu V. Gupta, Moenieba Isaacs, Chris Béné, Meryl Williams, Ningsheng Yang and Vincent Gitz (Secretary)

Download the report here

Extract of the FOREWORD by Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Chair of HLPE Steering Committee

This report addresses a frequently overlooked but extremely important part of world food and nutrition security: the role and importance of fish in seeking food and nutrition security for all. Fisheries and aquaculture have often been arbitrarily separated from other parts of the food and agricultural systems in food security studies, debates and policy-making. I applaud the Committee on World Food Security for its decision to bring fisheries and aquaculture fully into the debate about food and nutrition security.

The report presents a synthesis of existing evidence regarding the complex pathways between fisheries and aquaculture and food and nutrition security, including the environmental, economic and social dimensions, as well as issues related to governance. It provides insights on what needs to be done to achieve sustainable fisheries and aquaculture in order to strengthen their positive impact on food and nutrition security.

The ambition of this compact yet comprehensive report is to help the international community to share and understand the wide spectrum of issues that make fisheries and aquaculture such an important part of efforts to assure food security for all.

…

The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) was created in 2010 to provide the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security (CFS) with evidence-based and policy-oriented analysis to underpin policy debates and policy formulation. While specific policy interventions should be based on context-specific understanding, HLPE reports provide evidence relevant to the diversity of contexts, with recommendations aiming to be useful to guide context-specific policy interventions.

…

The main findings of the report cover the themes:

  • Fish as a critical food source
  • Fish has received little attention in food security and nutrition strategies
  • Risks and pressures affecting the world fisheries
  • Opportunities and challenges in aquaculture
  • Small vs large scale fishing operations
  • Unsettled debates on fish trade
  • Social protection and labour rights
  • Gender equity
  • Governance

In the Executive Summary, the report says the following on Gender Equity (paras 27-29; the body of the report contains more detail)

  • 27. The first comprehensive attempt to estimate the number of fish workers found that 56 million, near half of the 120 million people who work in the capture fisheries sector and its supply chains, are women. This is essentially due to the very high number of female workers engaged in fish processing (including in processing factories) and in (informal) small-scale fish trading operations. However, small-scale fisheries and supply-chain jobs outside production are not well recorded, so the actual number of women may be higher. Comparable estimates are not yet available for the 38 million aquaculture sector workers.
  • 28. Gender, along with intersectional factors (such as economic class, ethnic group, age or religion), is a key determinant of the many different ways by which fisheries and aquaculture affect food security and nutrition outcomes, availability, access, stability and diet adequacy, for the population groups directly involved in fish production and supply chains, but also beyond.
  • 29. Men are dominant in direct production work in fisheries and aquaculture. Much of women’s work, such as gleaning, diving, post-harvest processing and vending, is not recognized or not well recorded, despite its economic and other contributions. Gender disaggregated data are not routinely collected and, partly as a result of this, little policy attention is given to women and to the gender dimension of the sector.

In the Recommendations, item 7 addressed Gender Equity with the following recommendation (7)

States should

  • 7a) Ensure that their aquaculture and fisheries policies and interventions do not create negative impacts on women and encourage gender equality.
  • 7b) Enshrine gender equity in all fisheries rights systems, including licensing and access rights. The definitions of fishing must cover all forms of harvest including the forms typically practised by women and small-scale operators, such as inshore and inland harvesting of invertebrates by hand and the use of very small-scale gear.

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Aquaculture, Asia, Change, Conservation, FAO, UN Women, World Bank, IFAD, UNIDO and other multilateral, Fish post-harvest, Fisheries, Gender, Gender and development, Gendered labor studies, gleaning, Global, Globalization, ICSF, Localization, Men, Natural resource management, Pacific, Oceania, Regional, Research, communication resources, Risk reduction, Theme, Uncategorized, West Asia/Middle East, Women, women divers

April issue of Yemaya now out

Posted on May 17, 2014 | Leave a comment
Two young Nova Scotia (Canada) fishers - Fallon and Grace, running their own fishing boat. Source: Corinne Dunphy, Yemaya 45 p. 8

Two young Nova Scotia (Canada) fishers – Fallon and Grace, running their own fishing boat. Source: Corinne Dunphy, Yemaya 45 p. 8

Yemaya, the gender and fisheries newsletter of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) has recently released its April 2014 issue.

This issue, Yemaya has a special focus on the progress and shortcomings of the coverage of women’s equity strategies in the forthcoming Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale  fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. 

Visit the ICSF website to download the whole issue, which contains the following articles.

  1. SSF Guidelines: Through the gender lens by Cornelie Quist
  2. Profile: Taking the lead—Ramida Sarasit by Kesinee
    Kwaenjaroen
  3. Milestones: Milestone agreement at UN gender equality talks by Ramya Rajagopalan
  4. Review: A yawning gender gap by Danika Kleiber
  5. Canada: Following Fallon and Grace by Corinne Dunphy
  6. What’s New Webby? Interactive map of fi sh markets in Chennai
  7. India: Mapping markets in Mumbai by Shuddhawati S Peke
  8. Q & A: Interview with Maria Odette Carvalho Martins by Naina Pierri
  9. Yemaya Mama: cartoon
  10. Yemaya Recommends: Film “A Mae e o Mar/The Mother and The Sea: review by Alain Le Sann

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Aquaculture, Asia, Brazil, Canada, Chennai, Country, Danika Kleiber, Fish post-harvest, Fisheries, Gender, Geography, Global, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Nova Scotia, Portugal, Tamil Nadu, Thailand, Women

Women and children first: Gendered and generational change in small scale fisheries in Canada and Norway

Posted on February 15, 2014 | 1 comment
Library and Archives, Canada. 1993 postage stamp.

Library and Archives, Canada. 1993 postage stamp.

Barbara Neis, Siri Gerrard and Nicole G. Power have written a reflective paper on the social-ecological systems of cod (Gadus morhua) fisheries in Atlantic Canada and Norway. Their study revealed similarities but also many differences between the ways small scale fishing communities in the two countries have reacted to changes in the fish stocks and the policies that accompanied the changes.

Their paper, “Women and Children First: the Gendered and Generational Socialecology of Smaller-scale Fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador and Northern  Norway,” draws from the great depth of excellent sociological and gender research over the last decades, including especially their own. It explores the impacts since the late 1980s and early 1990s of the Canadian cod stock collapse and of the introduction of a new type of quota system in the Norwegian part of the Norwegian-Russian cod fishery.

They found that the ecological trajectories were very different in both fisheries – the Canadian cod stock has not recovered, but some other fisheries have prospered in its place, while the Norwegian cod stocks are at a record high. However, policy differences between the two countries resulted in employment decreasing in both countries, with the Norwegian decrease 10% greater than that in the Canadian fishery. Women’s formal engagement in the two fisheries differ, but is generally low, especially in  Norway where they have been less likely to engage in the catching sector. In both places, young people are not entering the fishery, although modest success has been achieved with youth-oriented initiatives in Norway. The age profile of fish-workers is getting older.  Women and  youth face the hurdle of raising sufficient funds to buy boats, licences and quota. The changes are complex and the social and household impacts have emerged in the face of gender and generational blindness in policy-making.

Download the paper here

ABSTRACT. The resilience of small-scale fisheries in developed and developing countries has been used to provide lessons to conventional managers regarding ways to transition toward a social-ecological approach to understanding and managing fisheries. We contribute to the understanding of the relationship between management and the resilience of small-scale fisheries in developed countries by looking at these dynamics in the wake of the shock of stock collapse and fisheries closures in two contexts: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and northern Norway. We revisit and update previous research on the gendered effects of the collapse and closure of the Newfoundland and Labrador northern cod fishery and the closure of the Norwegian cod fishery in the early 1990s and present new research on young people in fisheries communities in both contexts. We argue that post-closure fishery policy and industry responses that focused on downsizing fisheries through professionalization, the introduction of quotas, and other changes ignored the gendered and intergenerational household basis of small-scale fisheries and its relationship to resilience. Data on ongoing gender inequities within these fisheries and on largely failed recruitment of youth to these fisheries suggest they are currently at a tipping-point that, if not addressed, could lead to their virtual disappearance in the near future.

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Posted in Americas, Barbara Neis, Canada, Change, Europe, Fish post-harvest, Fisheries, Gender, Gender in the workplace, Gendered impact study, Gendered labor studies, Globalization, Labrador, Men, Newfoundland, Nicole Power, Norway, People, Siri Gerrard, Women

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Counting all the fishers: a global overview

Posted on February 7, 2014 | 4 comments
Collecting Shells at Low Tide, Hokusai, Japan, c. 1832-1834. Colour on silk. Osaka Municipal Art Museum, Osaka. Source: http://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00021/

“Collecting Shells at Low Tide”, by Hokusai, Japan, c. 1832-1834. Colour on silk. Osaka Municipal Art Museum, Osaka. Source: http://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00021/

Women’s as well as men’s fishing should be taken into account in marine ecology assessments, according to the recent global review, “Gender and small-scale fisheries: a case for counting women and beyond“, by Danika Kleiber, Leila Harris and Amanda Vincent. Typically, they point out, women’s participation is only considered from a social perspective.

After reviewing 106 case studies reported over the last 20 years (including many reported in the AFS Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries symposia), they examine why women may not be included in fishing accounts. They conclude that the very definition of fishing and fishers can be a limitation (see also their paper on fishing in the Central Philippines). Also, gender may be overlooked as a key variable in the study design and thus the sampling becomes biased. Finally, gender data can “evaporate” as a study is conducted, even if included in the design from the start, for example if the field data collectors are not trained in collecting gendered data.

The paper ends with this statement:

The inclusion of gender enables us to more accurately assess the state of fisheries, to better understand the diverse effects of fisheries change and management for populations, and to move towards the interdisciplinary management models that are increasingly demanded by policy makers.

To contact Danika Kleiber: Danika.Kleiber@gmail.com

Abstract: Marine ecosystem–scale fisheries research and management must include the fishing effort of women and men. Even with growing recognition that women do fish, there remains an imperative to engage in more meaningful and relevant gender analysis to improve socio-ecological approaches to fisheries research and management. The implications of a gender approach to fisheries have been explored in social approaches to fisheries, but the relevance of gender analysis for ecological understandings has yet to be fully elaborated. To examine the importance of gender to the understanding of marine ecology, we identified 106 case studies of small-scale fisheries from the last 20 years that detail the participation of women in fishing (data on women fishers being the most common limiting factor to gender analysis). We found that beyond gender difference in fishing practices throughout the world, the literature reveals a quantitative data gap in the characterization of gender in small-scale fisheries. The descriptive details of women’s often distinct fishing practices nonetheless provide important ecological information with implications for understanding the human role in marine ecosystems. Finally, we examined why the data gap on women’s fishing practices has persisted, detailing several ways in which commonly used research methods may perpetuate biased sampling that overlooks women’s fishing. This review sheds light on a new aspect of the application of gender research to fisheries research, with an emphasis on ecological understanding within a broader context of interdisciplinary approaches.

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Asia, Danika Kleiber, Europe, Fisheries, Gender, Gender and development, Gender research resources, Global, Natural resource management, Pacific, Oceania, Women

Looking back at 2013

Posted on January 3, 2014 | 2 comments
At the end of GAF4, student volunteers and Piyashi DebRoy (winner of GAF4 AquaFish CRSP Best Student Paper award congratulate all GAF4 participatns.

At the end of GAF4, student volunteers and Piyashi DebRoy (winner of GAF4 AquaFish CRSP Best Student Paper award congratulate all GAF4 participatns.

In 2013, the Genderaquafish.org website continued to develop as a global source of information sharing and news. Compared to 2012, the number of visitors grew by 16%, to over 17,000 for the year. The visitors came from even more countries than last year (163 countries, compared to 154 countries in 2012). The top 5 countries of our visitors were: India (3,695), USA (1,804), UK (1,124), Philippines (1,078), Malaysia (705).  Click here to see the complete report for 2013.

World map of visitors to Genderaquafish.org, 2013. source: WordPress Stats

World map of visitors to Genderaquafish.org, 2013. source: WordPress Stats

Summary table of visits by region 2013

By region, most visits came from Asia, followed by Europe and North America. The visits are no doubt driven not only by the interest in the topics on our website, but also by the fact that information is only in English and that internet access varies greatly across the world. We would welcome links with multi-lingual partners to share similar information and translate posts to mutual benefit.

Here is a snapshot of information from our 47 new posts and several new pages for the year!

REGIONS. Asia, Africa and Europe have been the regions most covered. Other regions were not forgotten. We covered Oceania, the Americas, and West Asia/Middle East. We even featured a story on Arctic fisheries.

THEMES. Many themes ran through our posts and events for the year. Just a few to highlight were: change, climate change, post-harvest, gender in the workplace, gendered labour studies and HIV/AIDS were just a few.

EVENTS. The main gender in aquaculture and fisheries events of 2013 that we reported were:

– the 4th Global Forum on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries (GAF4) in Yeosu, Korea; and
– the  Center for Maritime Research’s (MARE) People and the Sea conference held a session entitled ” Engaging Gender for Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods and Improved Social Wellbeing: Perspectives from the Global North and South,” in Amsterdam in June. 
 

PUBLICATIONS. We highlighted many new publications in our posts, including one of our own, the Special Issue of the Asian Fisheries Science journal containing papers and an overview from our 2011 GAF3 Symposium.

PEOPLE. We are endeavouring to give more profile to the leaders – the people with a passion to make a difference – who supply the news and lead the studies and projects. This is a relatively new initiative, so not all of our leaders are highlighted in the posts. You can a check out a few who are through this link: posts on people.

SOCIAL MEDIA. Our Facebook page, Twitter feed, Genderaquafish Google Group, Paper.li and Flickr media outreach is all integrated, although each has different, sometimes overlapping, audiences. all audiences continued to grow slowly. Piyashi Deb Roy and Danika Kleiber have stepped up to do the regular posts to the Google Group (a big thanks to both Piyashi and Danika!) and Angela Lentisco help with a sterling job tweeting during the GAF4 event [read the tweets for day 1, day 2, day 3] (a big thanks, Angela!). N.C Shyla gave tremendous support in the posts and webpages for GAF4 (a big thanks for your work, N.C.!). 

2014 promises to be another big year for gender in aquaculture and fisheries. Thank you all for your support as readers, contributors and commentators. Your contributions, suggestions and feedback are always welcome!

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Arctic, Asia, Australia, awards, Change, Climate Change, Danika Kleiber, employment, Europe, Events, Fish post-harvest, GAF3, GAF4, Gender, Gender in the workplace, Gendered labor studies, Geography, grants, HIV/AIDS, India, Malaysia, Men, Oceania, Pacific, People, United Kingdom, United States of America, West Asia/Middle East, Women

Are fisheries activists and researchers afraid of being seen as Feminists?

Posted on September 22, 2013 | 2 comments
There were 150 women members from CONAPACH at the International Congress of Women in Artisanal Fisheries held in Valparaiso, Chile from 5-7 June 2013. Photo: Yemaya July 2013, p. 6.

There were 150 women members from CONAPACH at the International Congress
of Women in Artisanal Fisheries held in Valparaiso, Chile from 5-7 June 2013. Photo: Yemaya July 2013, p. 6.

In the July 2013 edition of Yemaya, the gender and fisheries newsletter of the International Collective in Support of Small-scale Fishworkers (ICSF), the Editor, Nilanjana Biswas, pointed out that women fisheries activists were frequently afraid of being branded “feminists” because of the pejorative connotations of the term. And yes, she wrote,  “feminism is the ‘radical notion that women are people’, and so, have equal rights“. [See also our glossary explanation of the origins and use of the term feminism – https://genderaquafish.org/resources-3/glossary-of-terms/].

This observation about the resistance to being branded a feminist arose partly as an overall reaction to the challenges facing women in small-scale (and other) fisheries, but also directly from the Yemaya report, by Natalia Tavares de Azevedo and Naina Pierri, on the June 2013 International Congress on Women in Artisanal Fisheries. After this South and Central American event, Natalia and Naina wrote:

A striking point in the discussion was that the fisherwomen from Chile were keen to assert that they are not feminists, suggesting thus that feminism was something negative with which they do not want to be identified. This casting of feminism as reverse sexism, as an idea of “paying back with the same coin” or as putting women in a position of superiority and domination over men is, in our opinion, an unfortunate and common misconception, stemming from the lack of awareness of what feminism really is—the struggle for equal rights and for the end of unequal power relations between the sexes.

To read this and other articles in the July 2013 Yemaya, click here

An early fisheries (aquaculture) gender study that was not afraid to mention the word “feminist” was the Institute for Development Studies paper by Elizabeth Harrisson (1995), called “Fish and Feminists“, that explored the rather early forays into trying to address feminist ideals in fisheries projects. Here is the Summary of that report, which is an essential one to read if you are on the road to discovery in what gender in aquaculture and fisheries entails.

Summary:  Despite apparent acceptance of gender analysis within development organisations, this is still only rarely translated into gender-sensitive practice. The language of gender and development is adopted, but is accompanied by a subtle shift into ‘projects for women’. The article considers the problem through a case study of a programme in one international development organisation – the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The programme promotes small-scale fish farming in southern Africa, and gender issues have gained a high profile in its stated aims. The case study traces the articulation of gender issues from headquarters to a pilot project in Luapula Province, Zambia.

Download the IDS paper here

 

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Posted in Advocacy, Africa, Americas, Aquaculture, China, FAO, UN Women, World Bank, IFAD, UNIDO and other multilateral, Fisheries, Gender, Gender and development, ICSF, IDS, Men, Women, Zambia

Arctic fisheries in the news

Posted on February 21, 2013 | Leave a comment
Photo: Sloan et al (2002) Women in Arctic fisheries report.

Woman fisher. Source: cover of Sloan et al (2002) Women in Arctic fisheries report.

The European Union Fisheries Commissioner, Maria Damanaki, and the  Norwegian Fisheries Minister Lisbeth Berg-Hansen have recently discussed the need for a responsible approach to the Arctic region and and for governments to engage more closely with the people who live there. Concerns over climate change and its impact on Arctic fisheries and the people dependent on them generated the discussion.

In 2002, the Arctic Council sponsored the “Taking Wing” conference on gender equality and women in the Arctic  in Finland. The conference focused on the link between gender equality and natural resource management for sustainable development and made the following recommendation to the ministers:

…to establish a project to analyse and document the involvement and role of women and indigenous peoples in natural resource management in the Arctic.

The ensuing project published a report on “Women’s Participation in Decision-making Processes in Arctic Fisheries Resource Management: Arctic Council 2002-2004“,  by Lindis Sloan (editor), Joanna Kafarowski, Anna Heilmann, Anna Karlsdóttir, Maria Udén Luleå, Elisabeth Angell Norut and Mari Moen Erlandsen.

The report can be downloaded here.

(Thank you to Rikke Becker Jacobsen of IFM, Denmark and Charlotte D. Andersen of the Gronlands Nationalbibliotek in Nuuk, Greenland, for the link.)

Extract from the Preface

Fisheries represent a traditional way of life and are of great economic and cultural importance to coastal populations in the Arctic, indigenous and non-indigenous Northern inhabitants. Women are part of these coastal
settlements; fisheries resource management and regulatory measures affect their lives, yet they are not accorded stakeholder status or participatory rights in regulatory bodies.

This project has become a joint effort, with participants from Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, Norway and Sweden both in the work group and in the International Steering Committee. The Sámediggi, the Sámi Parliament in Norway, followed up on the original recommendation by commissioning a report on the gender equality aspect of their fisheries policy. A summary of this report is included as a separate chapter in the report.

The report is based on statistics and fieldwork studies in the participating countries, and each national chapter contains both statistics on the fisheries in the country, a fieldwork report and in several cases, the author’s recommendations. In addition, the national project leaders have agreed on a set of recommendations to national authorities and to the industry, and the International Steering Committee has agreed to support these recommendations. These are found in a separate chapter in the report.

This report is intended to be easily accessible to the fish harvesters, their communities, politicians and the industry alike; therefore it does not contain extensive background data or references to scientific literature. We have hoped to provide a broad picture of fisheries in the Arctic, and some of the many ways in which women are part of this industry.

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Posted in Americas, Arctic, Canada, Climate Change, Europe, FAO, UN Women, World Bank, IFAD, UNIDO and other multilateral, Faroes, Finland, Fisheries, Gender, Geography, Greenland, Men, Natural resource management, Norway, Regional, Sweden, Women

More than equal: Women’s Inshore Harvests in Oceania

Posted on February 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

Picture1A new paper in the journal Marine Policy, gives an overview of Women and fisheries: Contribution to food security and local economies. The paper is written by Sarah Harper, Dirk Zeller, Melissa Hauzer, Daniel Pauly, Ussif Rashid Sumaila and is a contribution from the Sea Around Us project.

The paper is an overview of a wide range of issues in world regions and highlights the problems of the lack of hard data on women’s harvests and women’s work in the fisheries sector more broadly. Using rough but best available estimates of participation rates from the Sea Around Us project work in the Western Pacific, the authors reckon that women produce more than half (56%) of the inshore fishery harvest.

Abstract: The substantial role of women in fisheries is overlooked in management and policy. Fortunately, it is gaining recognition despite a lack of quantitative data describing the scale of participation and contribution. This work summarizes existing knowledge on women’s participation in marine fisheries globally, and estimates their contribution in the Pacific. While women’s role varies between geographic regions, in the Pacific, women account for 56% of annual small-scale catches, and resulting in an economic impact of 363 million USD (total revenue: 110 million USD). Recognizing and quantifying the role of women in fisheries has profound implications for management, poverty alleviation and development policy.

The paper can be downloaded.

 

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Fisheries, Pacific, Oceania, Research, communication resources, Women