The May 2017 issue of Yemaya, the gender in fisheries newsletter of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, is now out. This issue is full of stimulating and diverse articles from around the world – Mexico, India, Fiji and more, many with a focus on the implications of Sustainable Development Goal #5 on gender equality and its implications for fisheries. Download the whole issue or individual articles (see list below) at this link. ...

Women have smaller enterprises, lower pay, and riskier work. Along the path from catch to consumer, gender limits the roles women play in the fishing industry. At the industry’s front-end, an estimated 86% of workers in fishing and fish farming are men. But in post-harvest, processing and marketing, the majority of fish workers are women. During processing, women’s roles regularly involve long hours of standing and repetitive work in wet and cold environments -- conditions that contribute to a suite of health problems. ...

Rapid economic development in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors often relies heavily on local or migrant women workers entering the paid workforce. This has been the case on the Island of Chiloé in southern Chile, one of the areas of intense growth of salmon aquaculture and salmon processing for export. In their recent paper in the journal World Development, Eduardo Ramírez and Ruerd Ruben examined the pre-existing gender patterns that led to a fast uptake by women of paid employment in the salmon industry. ...

First the joys! Thanks to a steady feed of good and relevant material on women/gender in aquaculture and fisheries, and supporting material from other themes and sectors, the information content of our website is steadily building up. If you use the excellent WordPress search function (right-hand top on the home page), or the category links down on the right of the home page, you can readily find the posts and pages you seek. ...

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. Sex-disaggregated data refers to data collected and analyzed separately on women and men. In many places across the world, data on women’s roles and contributions to small-scale fisheries are not readily available in mainstream fisheries data systems. In turn, women are often overlooked in fisheries policies and programs, including in licensing systems. ...

Through consultations with key fisheries-based stakeholders in four States of India, this study attempts to assess perceptions of fishing communities about the impact of climate change on their lives and livelihoods. It also evaluates the traditional knowledge, institutions and practices of fishing communities that are relevant to climate-change preparedness. ...

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 have been or are being taken further into published papers and reports, a webinar and other outputs that will contribute to the impacts of GAF7. ...

One of the biggest challenges for achieving gender equality is educating the present generation of leaders, project managers and other experts on the basic concepts and how they apply in daily work. Dr Anne Coles, a gender expert with extensive experience of research in migration, gender, development and social change, and also in delivering in-service training in gender in a wide range of sectors, has distilled her experience in these tips. ...

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. For example, over 50% of the casual workforce in fish drying yards in Bangladesh are women (Belton et al. 2018). Dried fish production and consumption is organized as a chain of activities from fish harvesting to drying/processing, trading, and distribution referred to as a value chain (Hossain, 2015). ...

We often lament that women’s roles and contributions to fisheries are invisible. This wonderful FAO photogallery of Tunisian women harvesting clams [Ruditapes decussatus] (click here) is one example that contradicts us! It is accompanied also by a very thorough and informative YouTube video (click here) [in French] on the FAO YouTube Channel. The harvesters work from the port of Zaboussa, near near Sfax. ...

“This 15-min video was produced by the Aquaculture Service of the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department for the Global Conference on Aquaculture 2010 and the Fifth session of the COFI Sub-Committtee on Aquaculture held in Phuket, Thailand in October 2010. With film clips taken from various countries and photos contributed by… many – depicting the range of people, species, environments, systems, practices as well as opportunities ...

HIV and syphilis prevalence and associated risk factors among fishing communities of Lake Victoria, Uganda By Gershim Asiki, Juliet Mpendo, Andrew Abaasa, Collins Agaba, Annet Nanvubya, Leslie Nielsen, Janet Seeley, Pontiano Kaleebu, Heiner Grosskurth, Anatoli Kamali Link (access required for full paper) http://sti.bmj.com/content/early/2011/08/10/sti.2010.046805.abstract Correspondence to Dr Gershim Asiki, Medical Research Council Research Unit on AIDS, Uganda Virus Research Institute, PO Box 49 Entebbe, Uganda; gershim.asiki@mrcuganda.org ...

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 failing to address the linkages between women and men in decision-making in the larger life settings. ...

Thanks to FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Division’s Aquaculture service, we are able to provide a link to a copy of just Chapter 6.3 from the Proceedings of the Global Aquaculture Conference. Here is the link to download the chapter ...

Disaster risk reduction and good governance were the topics highlighted at the Women’s Day Forum held at UP Visayas on March 9, 2012, Iloilo City campus. The Chairperson of the Philippine Commission on Women, Ms. Remedios I. Rikken, delivered the keynote address in response to this year’s theme: “Women Weathering Climate Change: Governance and Accountability, Everyone’s Responsibility.” ...

The recently completed project, USAID Oceans and Fisheries Partnership (USAID Oceans: 2015-2020) had human welfare and gender (HWGE) in fisheries as one of its workstreams, along with technology development for an electronic Catch Documentation and Traceability system (eCDT), Ecosystems Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM), Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and Regional Collaboration. USAID Oceans was implemented by Tetra Tech ARD in collaboration with the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) and the Coral Triangle Initiative for Coral Reefs, ...

Women in fishing communities all over the world face similar problems and over 120 delegates will gather today at a special workshop to collectively try to address them. The special workshop, ‘Using intersectionality in research on gender in aquaculture and fisheries’, is part of ‘Expanding the Horizons’, the 7th Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries conference in Bangkok on 18-21 October 2018. ...

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 ...

Women fish in marine seascapes and freshwater systems around the world, making important contributions to the fisheries sector, to their communities and to their own wellbeing and that of their families, yet often lack visibility and support. Inspired by the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022), this video tribute using a compilation of iconic photos of women fishing around the world highlights the contributions made and challenges faced by women fishing around the world. It depicts women gleaning for octopus in the intertidal areas off the coast of Tanzania ...

Congratulations to the competition winner Carmen Pedroza-Gutiérrez for her video, “The Women of Petatán,” a very thoughtful set of interviews with women fish filleters as they worked on processing piles of fish to prepare them for the market. The video was made in Petatán , Michoacán, Mexico. ...