Category Archives: Kate Barclay

Economics, trade analysis of fish value chains lacking good gender information

Posted on January 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

The 2016 conference of the International Institute for Fisheries Economics and Trade addressed how to incorporate the gender dimension into fish value chain analysis, especially when very limited gender information is available. The report of the gender sessions are now online.

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Woman at Tambak Lorok, Central Jawa, Indonesia, brings two yellowfin tuna ashore. Photo: Zahrah Izzaturrahim.

The 14 presentations and discussions on gender at IIFET-2016 highlighted that sex-disaggregated data and indicators must be improved. Using whatever information they could collect, experts presented gender analyses of value chains in Africa (Malawi and Nigeria), Asia (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand), North America (Mexico) and the Pacific (Solomon Islands), and global efforts on fisheries performance indicators and data sets. The presenters and participants discussed how, in these value chains, women are critical to adding value to fish, although within the household and society, ultimately men still make most of the key household decisions, sometimes despite interventions that seek to empower women. The gender report concludes by making some suggestions to IIFET in its future work on gender in fisheries economics and trade.

Read more the full report on the gender papers at IIFET-2016 here.

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Posted in Africa, Americas, Asia, Climate Change, Gender and development, Gendered labor studies, Global, IIFET, India, Indonesia, Kate Barclay, Malawi, Maldives, Mekong, Natural resource management, Nigeria, Pacific, Oceania, Regional, research, Research, communication resources, Solomon Islands, Stella Williams, Tamil Nadu, Thailand, Value chain analysis

Women in Solomon Islands tuna and coastal fish chains

Posted on August 22, 2015 | Leave a comment
Women selling reef fish in Solomon Islands fish market. Photo: kate Barclay.

Women selling reef fish in Solomon Islands fish market. Photo: Kate Barclay.

Women are particularly important in the key industrial tuna and coastal fish value chains in the Solomon Islands. They are active inshore fishers, critical in providing labour in the large SolTuna at Noro in Western Province, and in certain domains of local fish marketing.

A recent World Bank study [“Gender, Fisher, Trader, Processer: Towards Gender-Equitable Fisheries Management and Development in Solomon Islands” by Kate Barclay, Anne Maree Payne and Senoveva Mauli (2015)] has been synthesized by Olha Krushelnytska.

The study not only investigated the roles of women in the supply chains, but also examined the challenges for them and others making use of their labour.

In the case of the 1,000 women working for SolTuna, almost all on the processing line, the women and their employers reported several issues. The women reported on the sex segregation of jobs on the production line, in which they ended up in the lower paying jobs, lack of suitable housing, childcare, health issues, gender based violence that affected their ability to attend work at times, and low wages.

Management in the factory reported problems of high turnover and absenteeism, and lack of budgeting skills among employees.

However, even with good will, tuna processing alone is not enough to deliver on gender equality as many of the issues have deep social roots, and the industry is battling strong competition that emphasizes controlling production costs.

However, transactional sex occurs in ports, on ships and associated with factories and appears to have arisen with the growth of the fishing industry from the 1970s onwards. Judging by the summary report, more efforts are needed to address the issues

In coastal fisheries, women in the Solomon Islands are responsible for more than half the subsistence catch and are important in marketing. Women are also involved in such (low paying) traditional activities as making shell money.

Of the range of fisheries activities for women, the most lucrative is marketing of coastal fish, which is better than working on the tuna processing line or making shell money. However, men dominate (75% in the capital Honiara) the markets, in numbers, management and the overall functioning of the system.

The report concludes with a series of recommendations.

Download the summary report here

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Posted in FAO, UN Women, World Bank, IFAD, UNIDO and other multilateral, Fish post-harvest, Fisheries, Kate Barclay, Oceania, Pacific, Solomon Islands, Tuna

Broadening the perspective of fisheries management by including gender

Posted on March 4, 2015 | Leave a comment
Selling shell jewellery, Central Markets, Honiara, Solomon Islands 2014. Photo: Kate Barclay

Selling shell jewellery, Central Markets, Honiara, Solomon Islands 2014. Photo: Kate Barclay

The Secretariat for the Pacific Community’s recent regional workshop on the “Future of coastal/inshore fisheries management,”  3 to 6 March 2015 included the role of women (along with youth and culture) in fisheries management as one of the main topics. Other topics included community based resource management, livelihoods and the private sector, and the role of tuna in food security.

Presenter Assoc. Prof. Kate Barclay from the University of Technology Sydney talked about including gender in fisheries management within broader approaches to fisheries management such as the Interactive Governance for Fisheries (see Fish for Life) approach.  She argued that conventional fisheries management has a tunnel vision approach and that addressing the shortcomings of conventional fisheries management involves broadening the perspective of what is involved in resource governance to include social factors, including gender relations. This means fisheries agencies working in collaboration with other government agencies, as well as with various stakeholder groups, to cover the complex social issues affecting fisheries management.

logo_future_fisheriesBroadening the perspective to include gender relations and look at fisheries as social ecological systems means doing things differently. Two examples of changed approaches were presented. Danika Klieber’s work demonstrates that the tunnel vision of conventional fisheries management means renders invisible a significant amount of fishing activity, and shows how enumeration may be done differently to better include women’s fishing. The work by WorldFish in Solomon Islands has involved introducing gender transformative approaches, rethinking how consultation with fishing communities is conducted, and developing new methods to effectively engage with women, elicit their perspectives, and design projects that reflect women’s as well as men’s interests.

Kate Barclay’s presentation can be downloaded here.

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Posted in Fisheries, Gender, Kate Barclay, Men, Natural resource management, Pacific, Solomon Islands, SPC, Women