“So though Nandeesh is not with us physically, his thoughts and deeds are there to guide us through these difficult times” Rajeswari Dayal B. (his loving wife) . This marks the first anniversary of the passing of our dear friend Dr Mudnakudu C. Nandeesha, who was the person who brought gender awareness to the Asian...

The Bay of Bengal Programme has created a rich interactive website containing information on all the fish markets of Chennai in Tamil Nadu State, India. For each market, the site give factual information on name, ownership, numbers of stalls, location and directions for getting there, opening hours, types of fish sold and infrastructure improvement needs.

The Gender Strategy for the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish is designed to “operates along a continuum of gender integration approaches, from the accommodating to the transformative, and will contribute to understanding under what conditions each approach has the potential to advance chain performance and the outcomes of poor women and other marginalized...

We welcome the latest edition of the Secretariat for the Pacific Community’s (SPC) 23rd Women in Fisheries Information Bulletin. The Editor, Veikila Vuki highlights that the contributions covers gender roles in coastal fisheries, women’s fishing activities in communities, climate change and gender issues in development. Read the latest issue online! CONTENTS Gender and change in the...

In coastal communities in India, fisheries and aquaculture can provide women and men with many opportunities for work and livelihood. In Tamil Nadu state, the Central Institute for Brackishwater Aquaculture (CIBA) has long worked on the ground and out in the villages to improve those opportunities with science and people-based projects. Recently, CIBA published two...

Christine Okali’s latest blog challenges policy makers to scrap the handy (and often unsupported) narratives on women/gender and climate change. Here is some of what she said – but do read the whole blog! “It is time to re-socialise gender policies. For real progress to be made towards gender equity and transforming gender relations across...

Christine Okali’s latest blog challenges policy makers to scrap the handy (and often unsupported) narratives on women/gender and climate change. Here is some of what she said – but do read the whole blog! “It is time to re-socialise gender policies. For real progress to be made towards gender equity and transforming gender relations across...

A new publication from the World Bank’s Africa Development Forum takes a hard look at gender inequality in legal rights and relates this to women’s chances of succeeding in the economic sphere. Particularly, this book looks at family inheritance and land laws, which underlie the (gender-blind) business laws. It examines the laws in all 47...

Many fisheries and aquaculture experts are now engaged in climate change research and action, so this new publication from the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and collaborators is a handy guide to finding the gender-sensitive text in the various formal agreements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Download the document here: http://www.wedo.org/wp-content/uploads/united-nations-web.pdf...

Angela Lentisco reports on the Centre for Maritime Research (MARE) Conference in Amsterdam (26 to 28th June 2013), panel sessions led by Easkey Britton on Engaging Gender for Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods and Improved Social Wellbeing: Perspectives from the Global North and South. “The panel presentations (which you can download from the links on this website) were food for...

Most marine and fisheries development projects are gender blind, even though, in recent years, they generally pay much more attention to reaching out to fishing communities. What does a major, multi-country project do when it wants to get serious on overcoming its gender-blindness? For sure, the project partners face a steep learning curve, but the...

This FAO publication is a very welcome addition to the material on the problems and solutions to gender inequality all along fish supply chains. Good practice policies to eliminate gender inequalities in fish value chains, by Jennie Dey de Pryck analyses the facts, as they are known and provides guidance to action to address the inequalities across the sector,...

A report and news story have come out on “Capacity building of tribal women self help groups on brackishwater aquaculture integrated with agro – based technologies” by Dr B. Shanthi, and her colleagues M. Kailasam, K. Ambasankar, P. Mahalakshimi, V.S. Chandrasekaran, S.M. Pillai and A.G.Ponniah, all of the the Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (CIBA, Indian,...

Change is often gendered as revealed in a recent FAO post harvest fisheries report. FAO introduced simple but highly effective fish drying racks to local processors in Burundi in a project in 2004 and local people have continued to develop and use the new effective technology. An FAO short report “Simple fish-drying racks improve livelihoods and...

This website, genderaquafish.org, will be 3 years old next month. Recently, as I undertook some long overdue maintenance, I reflected on the joys and pains of a maturing website. First the joys! Thanks to a steady feed of good and relevant material on women/gender in aquaculture and fisheries, and supporting material from...

In northern Australia, Lisa Petheram, Ann Fleming, Natasha Stacey and Anne Perry reported the results of a first study in Wurruwi community on South Goulburn Island (Northern Territory, Australia) people’s, especially women’s, perceptions and preferences on marine resource use and climate change. The report describes the local communitys’ modern history up to the 2011 establishment...

Naila Kabeer and Luisa Natali recently published a review for the Institute of Development Studies into the two-way relationships between gender equality and economic growth, across sectors and countries. They reviewed studies of labour market participation in different sectors and services, earnings and well-being and rights. Their conclusion is that the relationship between gender equality...

Bernadette Resurreccion of the Asian institute of Technology recently examined whether we are experiencing a return to the old narratives regarding women and the environment. In her paper, “Persistent women and environment linkages in climate changeand sustainable development agendas“, she found evidence that advocates, researchers and development practitioners are resorting to simplistic and potentially distorting narratives Read more about Is Climate Change Debate Re-cycling Past Women-Environment Narratives?...

Maharashtra State in India is famous for many things, especially as the home of Bollywood movies with its famous female and male stars. Now, two new studies on women fish vendors in Maharashtra shine small but important spotlights on the women fish vendors of its diverse fish markets. They may not be as famous as...

In 2012, the European Union (EU) Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF), through the Joint Research Centre of the EU, published a report on the Economic Performance of the EU Fish Processing Industry Sector (STECF-OWP-12-01). In aggregate from the reporting countries, the 2011 employment statistics show that women and men are almost evenly balanced, in terms of...

A bold new Nigerian initiative to support Nigerian rural women and women academics has launched, led by Dr Stella Williams, well know to many of the genderaquafish.org followers. The Nigerian Women in Agricultural Research for Development (NIWARD) initiative will be hosted at the Centre for Gender Issues in Science and Technology (CEGIST) of the Federal University...

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...

The FAO-Spain Regional Fisheries Livelihoods Programme for South and Southeast Asia has taken their more formal gender materials (especially the RFLP gender mainstreaming manual) and their on the ground experience and produced this attractive, easy to read and yet very rich guide to what to do. Get the guide here: Download The clear lessons from experience include...

Last year, Genderaquafish posted on the new IFPRI, USAID, OPHI index on women’s empowerment in agriculture tool (see the post and links). Now, Christine Okali, one of the world’s foremost researchers on rural development and gender, has challenged the approach of the women’s empowerment index as being too specific, constrained to a point in time and...

Good gender-sensitive research starts with good data. IFPRI has just released a discussion paper to the 2011 FAO “State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011: Women and Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development“. The Discussion Paper provides “guidelines on how to collect better gendered data through surveys. It details who should be interviewed; how the Read more about New IFPRI release: data needs for gender analysis in agriculture...

WorldFish Center and IFAD have released a guide to ex-ante impact evaluation in aquaculture and fisheries. The guide gives good attention to collecting gender disaggregated information. The guide is: Crissman, C.C., Abernethy, K., Delaporte, A., Timmers, B. (2013) A Practical Guide for Ex-ante Impact Evaluation in Fisheries and Aquaculture. CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems...

Ending violence against women is the important theme of this 2013 International Women’s Day and many websites and media have excellent messages on the theme. Therefore, I will take the opportunity of International Women’s Day to highlight instead the global estimates of the “gender gap” – differences in attainments against several indices between women and ...

Dr B Shanthi of the Indian Central Institute for Brackishwater Aquacutlure (CIBA) and other researchers have been working to get technology into the hands of women’s groups in India (see Dr Shanthi’s PPT and paper from GAF3, 2011). Recently, the successes of some of the women entrepreneurs from southern India have been highlighted in the...

Getting gender into the fisheries and aquaculture agenda requires large and fundamental changes inside the organisations that support the sector, including the research institutes. Last year, the fisheries institutes of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), one of the world’s largest agricultural research systems, held a pioneering workshop to plan a future roadmap for Read more about A Future Gender Roadmap in Indian Fisheries Research...

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...

A 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...

The Spain-FAO Regional Fisheries Livelihoods Programme for South and South East Asia (RFLP) started its work in 2009 by undertaking comprehensive baseline studies in its selected coastal project sites in Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. RFLP published the baseline survey reports in traditional formats. Now, RFLP has turned the detailed reports into...

The new study by Zachary A. Kwena, Carol S. Camlin, Chris A. Shisanya, Isaac Mwanzo, Elizabeth A. Bukusi, carried out in Kisimu County, near Lake Victoria, Kenya, delves into social patterns of mobility and the risks it brings for contracting HIV/AIDS. Short-Term Mobility and the Risk of HIV Infection among Married Couples in the Fishing Communities along Lake Victoria.

The report from a recent CGIAR workshop at WorldFish Center, plus interviews with thought-leaders give insights into new ideas on a gender transformative approach. Building Coalitions, Creating Change: An Agenda for Gender Transformative Research in Development CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems. Penang, Malaysia. Workshop Report: AAS-2012-31. Abstract: There is compelling evidence that increased...

Gendered change in fisheries is starting to emerge as a significant field of research. This new research paper from Easkey Britton, published in Maritime Studies, finds that, over the last century – from the days of the independent “herring lassies” to the days of fisheries decline and factory closures – women have become less and...

Nelson Turgo’s paper, “Bugabug ang dagat” (Rough seas): Experiencing Foucault’s heterotopia in fish trading houses, in Social Science Diliman, provides intriguing analysis of how women and men fish traders use and view their daily spaces in fish trading houses of Mauban, Quezon province, Philippines. Abstract: Places in the contemporary world are subjected to the workings of differentiating logics, foremost R...

Women’s and men’s contributions are both critical to the success of aquaculture and fisheries. Statistics on the growing interest being shown in this website since its creation over two years ago (in September 2010) indicate that more people are taking an interest in research and development insights on gender in aquaculture and fisheries. In 2012, the...