A new EU report on the European Union member countries’ aquaculture sector contains some basic gender-disaggregated data on employment in the production segment of aquaculture. Although the statistics are incomplete, they nevertheless provide some useful information. The report is called: The Economic Performance of the EU Aquaculture Sector – 2012 exercise. (STECF-13-03). It is  a joint Scientific and Policy Report and was produced by the Joint Research Centre.

The statistics in the report refers to EU companies whose main activity is aquaculture production (‘Fish Farming’ according to official codes and definitions). Although some companies do other activities (eg. processing, distribution, marketing), aquaculture production is their main activity and therefore the data (mainly) refers to production .

Download the aquaculture report here: download

The key results show that, in 2010, women comprised:

– 29 % of the EU aquaculture sector employment

– 23 % of the FTE (full-time-equivalents) in employment

– 27 % of the EU aquaculture shellfish sector employment.

–  24 % of the EU aquaculture marine sector employment.

– 29 % of the EU aquaculture freshwater sector employment (but data are  less complete than for other forms because they are not compulsory – France and Romania are  biggest employers).

Women’s participation varied greatly by country and the EU averages tended to be dominated by patterns in France and Spain. The table below is an extract of data for countries with more than 1,000 aquaculture jobs.

Country	Total Number employees (2010)	Number female	% female	% female FTE
France	19,814	7,030	35	28
Ireland	1,719	146	8	8
Portugal	2,320	430	19	18
Romania	3,933	603	15	15
Spain	27,907	8,055	29	21
UK	4,000	n.a.	n.a.	[18% women in Scottish shellfish industry]

This entry was posted in: Aquaculture, Women