This short descriptive report comes from work during 2025 with the Patron of the seas project run by Liz Drury O’Neill from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Professor Alicer Ferrer from the University of the Philippines Visayas with collaborators Therese Lindahl, Simon West, Jinky Hopanda, Julie Ann Claire Nique and Robert Pomeroy. Here we present data collected from 144 women (107 men) across 7 Sitios (akin to villages) in one island Barangay (the smallest political unit in the Phillipines) in Concepcion, Iloilo as part of an experimental campaign in 2025 (to read more about the economic experiments see here).

This Edition includes an exciting collection of new stories and updates on various GAFS undertakings from around the globe. These are the highlights from this Edition: We’ve included several stories on GAFS contributions to global consultations and recent major events, highlighting how we continue to advocate for gender equality and create spaces to hear from fisherwomen first-hand about what they want.

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 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.

Read the latest E-Newsletter of the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section (GAFS) of the Asian Fisheries Society, our second COVID-19 era edition. The E-Newsletter Editor, Surendran Rajaratnam pointed out, “COVID-19 continues to disrupt our lives and livelihoods, we have learned to endure and continue to live with the disease and the uncertainties it brings. Although the pandemic has exposed political, health, economic and social vulnerabilities of many countries, the show of resilience and global cooperation to weather the virus is applaudable.”