Tales you should know
Workshop on Integrating Gender into Fisheries and Aquaculture Economics and Trade Research was held at World Fish Headquarters in Penang, Malaysia.
Economic analysis of market data was conducted by the research team to understand quantitative differences in livelihood outcomes for women and men engaging in the same trading activities at the same markets. Results from economic models show that gender is a key factor influencing earnings in fish trade and that other important drivers, including processing type and selling market size and location, are also shaped by gender. The team found that while women and men participate in fish trade in near-equal numbers in Malawi, women are earning less money per unit than men and tend to trade in smaller volumes.
Vijay Mahajan and SS Tabrez Nasar ask what can the people living in precarious locations in the Indian Sundarbans do to survive rapidly encroaching climate and ecosystem threats? The communities will need to quickly adapt to “Amphibious Living,” including by choosing “Amphibious Living Opportunities.” Abbreviated as ALO (আলো) in the local language, Bengali , this means “illumination” or “light” and also signifies “dawn”.
The 12th Indian Fisheries and Aquaculture Forum (12IFAF) was held in Chennai from 5 to 7 May 2022. We are pleased to report on two events with special relevance to gender in aquaculture and fisheries. The first is an award to a gender stalwart, Dr B. Shanthi, and the second is a report by Dr Nikita Gopal of the Special Session on Gender in Fisheries held at 12IFAF.
The Cooperative Action Plan recognizes this issue and presents a guide for addressing gender and labor issues faced by women workers in Asia-Pacific fisheries and aquaculture. It focuses on women’s labor and business opportunities, recognizing that women are not a homogenous category and their needs vary according to their working situations, life stages from youth to elderly, ethnicity, education, social and economic positions, immigrant status, among others. A call is made to individuals and organizations to make the Plan a reality.
The 13th Asian Fisheries and Aquaculture Forum (13AFAF) was a watershed for how gender was included in Asian Fisheries Society’s triennial Forums. Gender topics were in the Plenary, as a topic session and in the Forum’s graphic elements. The gender theme has come a long way in Asian Fisheries Society and can still go much further. Three messages to take home: why and how research is practices is critical to gender; need to focus more on women’s agency rather than their victimhood and marginality; and gender relations are dynamic under changes in resources and even new technologies.
The assumption that the tuna industry is dominated by men, or that only men fish, is not only wrong, but also damaging. As women make up half of the population, it is important to know if the development of fishing industries benefits both women and men. To do that, a first step is making women visible through gender-disaggregated data to have a better picture of how women are impacted in their societies.
This special issue of ICSF’s Yemaya features articles drawn from the presentations and discussions at the webinar, ‘Women Work in Fisheries, Too!’, held on 29 November 2021.
Getting to the Core Principles of Gender and Fisheries: The Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society (GAFS), celebrates International Women’s Day 2022 by releasing its Core Principles statement. The GAFS Core Principles are based on the formal Objectives in our By Laws, and our own and others’ experiences working in gender equality. The Principles have been drafted, discussed and put through open consultation among GAFS members and other interested experts.
Local Sama-Bajau do not passively accept the conservation regulations imposed upon their communities. Instead, they continue to access marine and coastal resources for their culture and livelihoods in ways that they consider to be morally fair. Despite much ‘women’s work’ being made illegal by the protected area, and social stigmatization, the women are important providers and contributors to household livelihoods.
This webinar – “Women Work in Fisheries, Too!” – on gender and labor in fisheries will be conducted to increase awareness and recommend cooperative actions that are necessary in having a gender and social inclusive approach to address labor issues in the fisheries sector.
Dried fish is considered a ‘hidden’ sub-sector within small-scale fisheries, and is particularly important in Asia and Africa. Women make up a significant portion of the workforce in this sub-sector. A new framework may reveal a thick description of gender relations.
Women are the unseen backbone of seafood supply chains, supporting local food security and ensuring that fish are processed and packaged for sale at regional and national markets. A recent paper by authors from Conservation International highlights how systemic discrimination and a lack of representation and recognition in the seafood industry worldwide makes women more vulnerable to abuse.
Vietnam has seen its economy undergo many drastic changes during the past 40 years, going from a centrally planned economy to a market-driven one. Since the transition to a market-driven economy, many studies on the economics of commodities have been conducted but this story reports on the first study of women in the purchasing node of tuna.
We are pleased to release the latest annual E-Newsletter of the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section (GAFS) of the Asian Fisheries Society. The E-Newsletter Editor, Surendran Rajaratnam pointed out that as he wrote his introduction, “people around the world have already endured weeks of social and economic restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the Pacific, the ocean is home. It connects social and cultural life, while providing key resources such as food and economic benefits, as well as connecting infrastructure and leisure opportunities. The Pacific’s richness in culturally enshrined lifestyles, its vast diversity of Polynesian, Micronesian and Melanesian traditions and its co-existence with...
Gender experts from across the globe have sought out scarce sets of sex-disaggregated data for the Illuminating Hidden Harvests initiative, ensuring that both women’s and men’s contributions to small-scale fisheries are seen. Just as data tells stories, so too does missing data. In fisheries, the lack of sex-disaggregated data is a story in itself,” said Dr. Jennifer Lee Johnson, an anthropologist with Purdue University.
Despite evidence of women’s contribution to the sustainability of fisheries worldwide, their roles in fisheries remain poorly understood and most often unrecognized altogether. The main hurdle in assessing women’s contribution is the lack of gender disaggregated data in fisheries, a well understood and nearly universal impediment to understanding women’s participation.
Women work in all stages of the fish value chain, producing, processing and selling fish and through their work support the economy, their households, and communities in rural and coastal regions. They are said to make up half the fisheries workforce, yet their work goes unrecognized in most official Read more about Latest special issue of Gender, Technology & Development examines new learnings on women and fisheries ...
Over a decade ago I started working with fisheries data and noticed that much was missing from the official statistics that are often the basis for fisheries management and policy. My work at that time, as a research assistant for the Sea Around Us initiative, focused on fisheries catch data, where small-scale fisheries were found to be grossly under-reported, with certain species completely overlooked and large amounts of discarded bycatch, mostly from industrial scale fisheries, missing from the data.
Small-scale fisheries are recognised for the important opportunities they provide in terms of livelihoods and food and nutrition security. Women, men, the young and elderly, are engaged in different aspects of fisheries value chains, from assisting with preparations for fishing trips to fishing and gleaning, through to processing and marketing the resulting catch. At a household level, fishers harvest fish which can be consumed at home, or barter, exchange or sell the fish generating goodwill or income which can be used to acquire other foods.
Social relations are important in small-scale fisheries value chains. This study addresses the question of how social relations affect engagement and outcomes of women who participate in the fish value chains. The social relations approach was useful to the study as it helped in understanding the social relations within the household and between the actors in the fish value chains.
Three new reports have been released on the 7th Global Conference on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries (GAF7), held in Bangkok 18-21 October 2018. These all present different types of important reportage on GAF7 and, from their different perspectives, help fill out the detail on the event. In addition, a number of presentations from GAF7...
All actors are needed to reach the goal but especially women are a key starting point By Maricela de la Torre-Castro, Stockholm University maricela (at) natgeo.su.se In my recent article, I used the concept of inclusive management to represent “any management strategy that consciously and explicitly considers gender and the whole diversity of actors” dealing ...
We are delighted to introduce the first annual e-Newsletter of the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society. Officially launched during the Opening Session of the 12 Asian Fisheries and Aquaculture Forum of the Asian Fisheries Society in Iloilo, Philippines, the Newsletter introduces the Section, its membership and Executive Committee, news ...