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 in world regions and highlights the problems of the lack of hard data on women’s harvests and women’s work in the fisheries sector more broadly. Using rough but best available estimates of participation rates from the Sea Around Us project work in the Western Pacific, the authors reckon that women produce more than half (56%) of the inshore fishery harvest.

Abstract: The substantial role of women in fisheries is overlooked in management and policy. Fortunately, it is gaining recognition despite a lack of quantitative data describing the scale of participation and contribution. This work summarizes existing knowledge on women’s participation in marine fisheries globally, and estimates their contribution in the Pacific. While women’s role varies between geographic regions, in the Pacific, women account for 56% of annual small-scale catches, and resulting in an economic impact of 363 million USD (total revenue: 110 million USD). Recognizing and quantifying the role of women in fisheries has profound implications for management, poverty alleviation and development policy.

The paper can be downloaded here.

This entry was posted in: Freshwater Fisheries, Marine Fisheries, Women