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 ...